


Per Aspera Ad Astra

by ManaPotion



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Crack, Dark Crack, Drunkenness, First Time, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Past Abuse, Self-Harm, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Snark, an officer and a gentleman if you will, bad attempts at romance, basically it's a grindhouse violent erotic crackfic, emotionally!stunted!hux, he's a man of many skills, mechanic!hux, medic!Hux, overly!emotional!ren, schlock, space racism, this is schlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-15 13:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 25,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManaPotion/pseuds/ManaPotion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>General Hux drags Kylo Ren's sorry ass onto an emergency escape shuttle just before the Starkiller core collapses – only to suffer a hyperjump malfunction and get stranded on Atrani 6, an uncharted hellrock on the outskirts of Hutt Space. With their accompanying Stormtroopers killed in the crash, and their craft rendered unflyable, the General and a heavily wounded Kylo Ren must begrudgingly work together in order to escape – and try to resist killing one another in the process.</p><p>Their newfound friendship inevitably undergoes trial by fire when a still-injured (but no-less-waspish) Ren strikes out on his own – only to be drugged, kidnapped, and sold as an exotic pleasure-slave to Drasda The Hutt! It's up to General Hux, Captain Phasma, and an intrepid utility droid named T301 to storm the Hutt's stronghold, rescue Kylo Ren, and save the day! Or some shit.</p><p>== Updates will resume after the KBB! ==</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bad Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> So my brain took [the interview](http://thissisatitle.tumblr.com/post/136940563782/during-the-nerdiest-podcast-with-domnhall-gleeson) where it was suggested there should be a series starring Hux and Ren stuck together on a random planet and forced into shitty situations, of course married it with the idea of Ren in a slave bikini, and this was the result. WIP. Tags are for the WIP work as a whole.  
> 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux saves Ren's ass and immediately regrets it._

 

 

“Ren!” General Hux shouts in frustration, the surface of the Starkiller base shuddering beneath them. Kylo Ren's head lolls back and forth, his torn body half-slung over Hux's shoulders, half-dragging along the forest floor. The snow is too soft, melting all the more in the planet's quickly-rising temperature, and Hux falls through to his knees with every step.

“Where are those _fucking stormtroopers?!_ ” Hux's shout is hoarse, his breath glows pink as the light of a nearby explosion flashes through the trees.

Ren groans unintelligibly at his side, slipping in and out of consciousness. He's lost a lot of blood. Maybe too much. It trails behind them, dark and red in the ruined snow.

It's not much farther to the shuttle. It feels like the landscape keeps shifting, and Hux is thankful for the ragged trail of bootprints he'd left on the way here. They couldn't land any closer for the trees, and Ren's position was still moving when the tracker had blitted out. Hux didn't exactly fancy risking landing the shuttle _on top of_ the knight he was trying to rescue. He doesn't exactly fancy risking his own life trying to make that rescue, either. It seems harder than ever to justify to himself now, his lungs burning, his limbs shaking with overuse, Ren proving to be little more than dead weight. This is all _his_ fault, anyway. His arrogance. His carelessness. His ridiculous dogma. His spiritual delusions. Some dark adept of the sith, beaten into submission by a half-starved scavenger and a traitorous whelp of a trooper who'd defected without a single kill below his belt.

Hux should leave him here. Nevermind his own hand in failing to foresee the defection. They may both die here. The collusion of senior staff in the same transport vehicles during crisis was a significant breach of security protocol for good reason.

Hux should leave him here.

He doesn't.

He and the troopers had split up to cover more ground when they landed and could no longer get a reading on Ren's signal, leaving them only with the knowledge that Ren was lying _somewhere_ within a two-hundred meter radius, and that they had roughly five-hundred and fifty seconds until ionizing radiation boiled the flesh from their bones. They were to stay in touch via trooper local area com – but at this point, Hux reasons, the turbulence from the collapsing Starkiller core had likely EMP'd any and all planetside radio communication.

The frozen earth pitches beneath them without warning, and Hux is thrown from his feet. He lands on his free side with a thud, his wrist twisting at what can't be a healthy angle from where it tried to break their fall. Ren goes down with him, of course, the knight's limp body adding unwelcome force to the fall. The wind's been knocked out of Hux's chest, and he can feel his lungs struggle to expand as he scrambles back to his knees in the snow. Ren lies disconcertingly still, and Hux shouts his name again, hearing his voice break against the deafening din as hundreds of millions of pounds of rock, ice, and metal strain beneath them.

“If we survive this,” Hux snarls, digging Ren out of the snow with vicious haste, “I'll kill those sodding troopers myself!” He jams his finger against the emergency distress signal on his wristband a few more times for good measure, before hoisting the arm from Ren's good side over his own shoulders, and forcing himself to his feet. There's a groan from Ren, and Hux bites through his own lip in frustration and relief. _And I was_ _thisclose to leaving you here, you bastard._

Not much farther, now. Twelve more seconds and he's at the clearing. Ten, if he hurries. He has to hurry.

Hux moves as fast as he dares, as fast as he's able in the treacherous footing, dragging Ren beside him. He can't risk another stumble. Can't afford the lost time.

“Come on, you useless slag,” he bites out under his breath, half to Ren, half to himself. “Move!”

The light of the clearing strikes him with an oversaturating white. It stings like the taste of iron at the back of his throat. Hux makes a mental note to double the anti-rad dose he's already taken. If he makes it.

The pair of troopers still standing guard at the shuttle notice his appearance from the woods, and hasten to assist. As they near, they knock off two of the sloppiest salutes Hux has ever had the displeasure of seeing, but he can demote them later, when he's no longer facing the impending danger of having the nuclei shorn from his cells.

The troopers thankfully take Ren from him, carrying his twitching body between them. Hux forces his shaking muscles into the best run he can manage. This is why Captain Phasma makes sure you don't skip Leg Day at the Finalizer Senior Staff Gym and Training Center.

“FL-five-seven-fifteen, five-seven-twelve, and five-seven-nineteen still haven't returned, General!” the shorter trooper shouts over the din.

“There isn't time!” Hux barks back, the clang of his bootheels against the shuttle ramp reassuring, and he hits the lift the instant both soldiers have both pairs of feet on it. He dashes to the cockpit, greatcoat snagging along the way, tearing off him. “Punch it!” he shouts at the pilot, who has already initiated takeoff procedures. “ _Sod_ the atmosphere, clear that treeline and hit the hyperdrive _now!”_

“Sir! Without a copilot, I haven't finished inputting the jump coordina–”

There's a sharp pain at the back of Hux's head, and out the viewport he can see orange-red beginning to flood the snowy treetops.

“ – I said NOW, pilot!”

The drive engages, the force of the impact taking Hux clean off his feet and into the wall behind him. Orange-red gives way to the spaghettified, bright-white lights of the stars, then the pitch black of space, and then Hux has half a second to find and hit the emergency crash restraints on the wall he's currently plastered against before he ends up as so much turmeric on the viewport.

He only just manages. Hux doesn't have time to feel relief before he realizes they've exited hyperspace in-atmosphere on some planet. The pilot doesn't have time to reverse engines and pull up before they're ploughing full-speed, nose-first into yellow earth.

 _Well,_ thinks General Hux, before his mind goes blank, _at least dying while trying to escape the exploding remains of your star-killing superweapon is only slightly more ignominious than being ritually executed by the Supreme Leader for your failures, afterwards._

   


* * *

 

   
Hux's mind drags back into consciousness when a console explodes next to him, sparks burning through the right arm of his dress uniform and singing his freckled skin. He's hanging from the emergency restraints in a now-dark cockpit. The bow of the shuttle is below the wall he's suspended from, planted nose-down at a roughly eighty-degree angle in what he can only assume is the ground of whatever planet they've jumped into. From where he's hanging, Hux has a nice view of the pilot, who is currently various stages of goo on the primary control panel.

“Troopers, report!” he shouts, but there's no response.

Hux unhooks himself carefully, first one side, then the other, trying to prepare for the fall. He manages to stick the landing only half-ungracefully. He slides from the back of the pilot's chair he's landed on, dropping down the short way left to the panel. With a grimace he attempts to brush some of the gore off the console, tepid, pinkish ropes of intestines snagging and catching on some of the levers. Main and auxiliary power is down, but he manages to bring some emergency backup systems online. Reddish lights flicker on behind him with a hum.

Nav and Comm are down. Sodding of course.

He's going to have to climb up the floor or walls to exit the shuttle, tipped nose-down as it is at an almost right angle. Or. Hux tries the reverse thrusters. Gently, just enough to pop them free. It couldn't hurt to try.

There's a groan from the shuttle, that tell-tale drone as the engines try to start up. And then it cuts off. There's a hissing sound, Hux cranes to try and identify it. The console's diagnostics are misfiring, and he can't get a proper read. The hissing amplifies. _The fuel line._

Not good. The consoles are sparking. Not good. There's a pop, a burst, and something far too close to an explosion for the General's liking shudders through the craft. Now they're on fire. _Not. Good._

“ _Wa-rning!_ ” The shuttle's ai warbles, staticy and crackling. “ _Hyperdrive containment casing has been bre-eached. Warning. Initiate emergency evacuation protocols._ _Wa-arning._ ”

“Troopers!” he tries again, not expecting reply, “Ren!”

He's going to have to climb out. Luckily, executive class emergency escape shuttles have built-in ladder grips along every side. Hux locates a hand-release on the floor-panel, which currently faces him nearly head-on. The sheath slides open, exposing rungs, and Hux begins to climb.

He's raiding a first aid battery on his way up, slinging the shoulder-straps of a couple of kits across his back, when another tremor runs through the craft.

“ _Wa-arning!_ ” The ai warbles again, “ _fire in cockpit detected!_ ” Before he has a chance to react, the automated fire extinguishers kick in, and suddenly Hux is strangling on flame retardant. He dips down below the jet to get out of the worst of it, sputtering, catching his breath before pressing his face into his own shoulder and climbing up through the white spray, quick as he can manage.

Hux gets to the aft chamber, where Ren and the two troopers should be. One of them, it seems, didn't manage to get his crash restraints on right, in time. He's a torso and a pair of legs in a sling, short an arm and a head. The other seems unconscious, but might still be alive. Same as Ren.

“ _Warning!_ _Emergency h_ _yperdrive con-tainment integrity at eighteen percent. Emergency evacuation procedures initiated. Wa-rning!”_

He might not have time to drag two bodies out the wreck. First things first. Hux clambers toward the escape hatch at the stern of the shuttle. It's jammed. Fucking of course. Hux strains on the valve, trying to twist it open. His injured wrist cracks and he bites off a curse. He can't get it open. Sod his wirey frame. Then it hits him. He climbs back down to where Ren is hanging. He can't quite reach Ren from this ladder, but he can climb over to the rails along the starboard side.

“Ren!” Hux slaps him once across the face, without getting a reaction, then again, harder.

“Nnngaa..” the knight's eyes flutter, his head rolling side to side. “Nnga-not now,” he babbles.

“What?! Ren the _drive_ has gone _critical_ ,” Hux barks point-blank range into Ren's face, over-pronouncing every syllable, “you need to _force_ the rear emergency evac hatch _open!_ Ren!” Hux takes the senseless knight's jaw in his hand, turning it to face the jammed escape hatch, nevermind that his eyes aren't really open.

“You need to _force_ the _hatch open,_ Ren! Can you do that?”

“Ngmmahh,” Ren waves his hand clumsily in the general direction of the hatch. The metal wall next to it buckles outward.

“Almost, _almost_ , a little to the _left!_ ” Hux knees Ren in the shoulder behind his outstretched arm, producing a displeased grunt but also a better alignment. “Ren! _Open!_ ”

The frame of the hatch buckles. It's the wrong side – the hinges, not the handle, but the bolts twist, strain, then pop free, first one, then another, then all together. The bent hatch door sags open. Sand and yellow earth start pouring in.

_Oh, this just gets better and better._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> -
> 
>  
> 
> I return to writing fanfic after a too-long health hiatus! Woo! It feels good to be back in the cockpit, again. I hope I’m not too rusty, and that someone enjoyed reading! Apologies if the intro here is a bit by-the-numbers. The next chapter should be up within a week! 


	2. And Into The Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux and Ren make an explosive entrance on Atrani 6._

The sandy earth isn't filling the width of the hatch as it pours in, thank Tarkin. It spills mainly down the bottom half, the steady stream of it like an ochre downspout, flowing along the rungs leading up to the escape hatch.

“ _Wa-arning! Emergency hyperdrive con-tainment integrity at thirteen percent. Evacua-tion in progress.”_

Hux scrambles for an emergency field survival kit in one of the side compartments, before he forgets. It's not the lightest, a good twenty kilos, and he slides into the shoulder strap with one free hand, other other gripping the rails near Ren.

Ren. How the shitting hell is he going to get Ren out of this? Or the other trooper, for that matter. He clambers back and begins to unclip the crash restraints the knight dangles in. The wall seperating the personell chamber from the cockpit is directly below them, in horizontal position with the way the shuttle is tipped nose-down. If he unclips Ren, the knight should drop the three or so meters onto it. Not the best, with his injury, but better than leaving him here. Hux pulls the release clips, first on one side, Ren mumbling something incoherent at the change.

“Just going to.. undo these–!” Hux cringes at the thump as Ren drops to the wall below in a heap, and the pained groan that follows. He considers undoing the other trooper – though perhaps it's best not to land another two-hundred odd kilos on top of the knight, at the moment.

“Ren!” Hux begins climbing down to him, “we have to leave the shuttle _now._ Can you stand?” Hux rifles around in the pile of black cloth and limbs until he feels hair, and drags hastily upwards. Ren's bloodcaked face emerges, moaning. His eyes roll concerningly, unfocused.

“ _Emergency hyperdrive con-tainment integrity at eight percent. Engine temperatures critical. Fire in cockpit. Wa-a-a-rning!”_

“Ren! We have to get out, _now,_ can you sta–” Hux never finishes his sentence, because, in the next five seconds, three things happen, in quick succession. First, an explosion rocks the shuttle. Second, Hux lets go of Ren's hair, reflexively, grasping at the walls to steady himself. Third, Ren, impossibly, incredibly, _infuriatingly_ , Force-jumps himself at the open hatch.

He sails the ten or so meters straight through the air, loses trajectory, bangs into a compartment, slides along it a bit, before flinging himself back up, and disappearing like a very ungraceful black snake up and out the top of the hatch.

“You _son-of-a-bitch!”_ Hux snarls, scrambling to climb as quick as he can, burdened with medipacs and survival kit, grabbing his forgotten greatcoat from where it had torn off him before the crash. _Sod_ the trooper, who's probably dead anyway, he doesn't need _another_ asshole climbing over him to get out.

Hux has to do the rungs while sand pours onto him. _At least it'll help put out the fires_ , he mutters inwardly, _might buy me a few more seconds_. He reaches the torn-open hatch, holding fast to the final rungs, a steady stream of sandy earth pouring straight across his chest. This isn't going to work. He tries not to panic. He has to turn on the rungs, so that his back is to the open hatch, in order to grasp the top of its frame above him and pull himself out. Only, he can't afford to turn with the sand pouring onto him. Not weighed down with medipacs and greatcoat, especially not with the added kilos of the survival kit.

Hux reaches for the frame above him with one hand, first, testing. He can't quite make it. His arms are shaking. He's not going to make it. He's unshouldering the survival kit in desperation when suddenly, a black-clothed arm appears from above. Ren.

Without thinking, Hux grabs it, Ren's hand tightening around his bicep, his own below Ren's. Hux places one boot up onto the bottom of the hatch's frame, forcing it through the stream of sand, angling his body. He tries to grasp at the rim above him with his other hand.

He feels Ren tugging at him, pulling him up, and suddenly – Ren flings him. At least, that's the best way Hux's mind has of processing it. He goes flying up, through the hatch, out of the shuttle, around in an arc, and lands with a whump! onto the displaced sand and earth that piled back in over the craft after it nose-dove into the ground.

His chest aches, and he wonders if Ren's broken his ribs – but he presently has little time to do more than squint in the too-bright twin suns above him before he's scrambling to his feet. Ren is still lying above the hatch from where he helped drag Hux out. They have to get off the shuttle. Hyperdrives that rattle out of their casings have a bad habit of tearing spacecraft apart. Especially when combined with leaking radioactive fuel.

Hux stumbles forward, grasping at Ren as he goes past him. Ren can't get to his feet, it seems. He tries twice with little success, and Hux in desperation, still burdened with medipacs, survival kit and greatcoat, drags Ren along by his good arm.

“Let go of me!” Ren babbles, one free arm grasping about his waist, and Hux fears the knight may be trying to reach for his lightsaber, in what for Ren's sake he hopes is wrought more of the knight's currently concussed, oxygen-deprived fugue, rather than true intent – but then they reach the edge of the sandy pileup.

Hux slides down what must be the port side of the shuttle, the sand and earth steep there, dragging a half-resisting Ren along behind him. He thinks Ren might be shouting at him, though as the knight is currently sliding head-first down the sandy incline, it's a bit hard to make out.

“Come _on_ _, Ren!_ ” Hux barks as they hit the ground. He's not going to make it out of the predicted blast radius with Ren weighing him down, that's for damn sure. He tries pulling the knight to his feet – but they buckle almost instantly, and Hux shouts in frustration as he breaks into what can barely be described as a very fast walk, the gear on his back, the sand underfoot, and Ren's pulled-along weight all working against him.

Hux hasn't gotten very far when he hears the explosion hit. He drops to the ground instinctively, arms folding up over his own head, cursing under his breath. He can hear shorn metal and debris landing around him, he can feel the reverberations in the earth as they hit. Any moment, now, he's expecting to get mown in half by a sheet of titanium.

It doesn't happen.

Hux waits until he's certain the blast has ended, and then some. He gets to his knees, cautiously. Indeed, the heat-folded, smoking remains of the craft litter the sand around them. All except for a curiously untouched oval, just the size of their bodies in length and breadth, encircling them.

Ren. It had to be, he's lying face-up, the arm Hux hasn't deathgripped onto still stretched out in front of him. Huh. Well, there was one merit to back his selection. Though Hux supposes he could just as well have used the trooper as a meat-shield, had he chosen to wake the other man instead.

He should really get them out of the smouldering crash. Hux considers using a stim on Ren. It might do the knight more harm than good, though, at this point. He decides against it, dragging the knight and supplies just beyond the worst of the wreckage. He'll need to do some cursory first aid.

Hux opens one of the medipacs. Taps a few antirad capsules and a handful of antibiotics into his palm, holds Ren's mouth open with the other hand, and dumps them in. “Swallow,” he instructs, trickling in some water from a tetrapack, then holding Ren's jaw closed. The knight struggles vaguely beneath him. “Swallow!” he instructs again, strengthening his grip slightly as Ren weakly thrashes. He can see Ren's larynx working, under the coat of half-dried blood running down his face from the wound that slashes it. The pills seem to go down.

He lays out his greatcoat, pulling a now groaning-again Ren onto it, and starts working the blood-soaked robes open. “Hold still,” he mutters at Ren's half-conscious attempts at resistance. It's not a pretty sight. The wound is deep, gaping, its edges cauterized but splitting, and half of Ren's chest and ribs are bruised purple and red. He sprays it down with antiseptic from the kit, taking the half-formed shout of pain in response from Ren as a good sign, vitals-wise. He only hopes the idiot doesn't take him for an assailant and whip that laser-blade out.

He probably shouldn't attempt to sew Ren up out here in the open, the wind whipping loose, dry earth around them. He sluices an entire packet of bacta over the wound, before taking out the emergency second-skin and spraying. It settles almost instantly in the baking heat, and Hux tries to wind a bandage around Ren's chest without jostling him too much, keeping one eye on that still-inactive saber at the knight's belt.

Not at all satisfied with the handiwork, but willing to tolerate it given the conditions, Hux takes a sip from the water-pack and downs his own additional antirad dose. Unzips the emergency survival kit, and lifts out the portable communications radio.

It doesn't turn on. He examines the casing with a sinking feeling in his gut – _just the adrenaline wearing off_ , he tells himself. He can't find any immediate flaw: the powercell's in, it seems to have charge. He doesn't want to risk opening it – not like this, sitting in the sand in what looks to be subdesert, no tools available. Hux replaces the radio inside the kit bag, silently attempting to reason his growing dread away. The powercell might be faulty. One little wire might be loose. He's sure it'll work, once he has a moment to examine it properly. He's quite certain.

Hux rises to his feet. The terrain looks the same in every direction. Arid, yellow earth, a few small shrubs. A flat, wide, sunbaked plane. Well.

A compass from the survival kit provides Hux with the direction of the planet's magnetic north, and he decides to head east, unwilling to risk heading further towards the equator of whatever hellrock they've landed on. This is the hottest climate Hux has ever had the displeasure of experiencing, and he removes his jacket, wrapping it around his head for protection. His hat, it seems, came off somewhere in the crash.

Ren's more or less senseless, his eyes shut, sweat beading his blood-caked face. The gash bisecting it still weeps in the center. Hux retrieves the emptied packet of bacta, folding it inside out, and rubbing what remains across the slash.

“Ren. Can you stand?”

There's no reply, not that Hux is expecting a coherent one. No reaction comes when the general lightly shakes him, either. With considerable reluctance, Hux prepares a makeshift litter of his greatcoat for Ren, tying the knight's body into it with his belt, taking a reflective insulation-blanket from the survival kit and laying it atop him, to help ward off some of the sun. The rest of the supplies he slings back over his own shoulders.

Time to get moving.

  



	3. Bad Vibrations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux and Ren make a new friend._

“I'm thirsty!”

 _Did he just._ Hux comes to a halt, steeling himself. He drops the litter, intentionally rough, though the pained grunt it produces from Ren gives him less pleasure than he thought it would. He's been walking in the searing twin suns for a good three hours, dragging Ren in the litter behind him. The asshole, as it turns out, is heavier than he looks, and Hux bristles with the thought that Ren hadn't been unconscious with injury the entire time.

Hux digs in the kit at his side for the tetrapack, taking a drink himself first, before turning around and dropping into Ren's chest. The knight cringes against the suns as Hux looks down on him, trying to keep the glare out of his eyes with one raised hand.

“Where are we going?” Ren slurs, after swallowing easily half the pack in one gulp.

“The ship's navcom was fried, and the portable com I managed to save from the wreck is, ah, malfunctioning.”

“Malfunctioning?” Ren's voice rasps, and he takes another drink.

“It won't start.” Hux supposes there's no point to beating around the bush.

He's quite certain Ren sneers at him, somewhere between his pained expressions and his cringing at the suns. The knight draws himself up to sit, pushing his hands into the sand for support. He's already drained the tetrapack, Hux notices with no small measure of irritation. He'd better hope they aren't more than a few days' walk from water.

Ren's looking around, turning his head slowly from side to side, squinting hard in the oversaturating sunlight. He pauses, eyes shutting entirely, his face screwing up. Hux frowns, uncertain of how to read this behaviour. Ren's head jerks a bit, eyes still closed, a few drops of perspiration sliding down the side of his face.

“That way,” Ren exhales, nodding south with his chin, eyes slipping open.

“What?”

“That way,” Ren repeats, lying back down in the litter, hand gesturing vaguely.

“..Are you sure?”

Ren lifts his gaze to give Hux a withering look. Fine. Not like Hux has any better option, really. _Than to trust the mystical hunch of a barely-conscious brat._

The next few hours pass in silence, disturbed by little more than the dry wind whipping by the scant shrubs of the arid plane. Hux's footsteps upset a snake, and it slithers past in a haste, sunlight glinting off its rust-brown scales. The red sun will no doubt set before the blueish one, Hux notes, though either event seems woeful long hours away yet, given their current position overhead. Ren had given no indication of distance to whatever it was he'd sensed they'd find to the south. Some settlement, perhaps, though the lack of any shapes even remotely resembling civilization on the horizon meant it would be at least another day's march ahead. Marching. If it could be called that.

The heat bears down on him like carbonite, and Hux rifles through the survival kit for the UV protection cream. Was there even a point to returning? Snoke would be furious with their failure, their loss of the Starkiller, surely. Their failure. _Ren's_ failure, Hux corrects himself. Ren was the one who impudently gave up the droid with the map to Skywalker, believing the scavenger girl to be all they needed. Right before he lost her, too. Hux scoffs at the memory, applying the cream to his other arm, the weight of the litter dragging behind him a greater affront with every step. The _gall_ of him. Releasing prisoners without in the very least frisking them properly for information first – and a _droid_ , no less, whose databanks could be easily downloaded at a moment's delay? Such levels of amateurism, at so high a military position. It was inconceivable.

Worse, still, Ren had been in the oscillator access tunnels, Hux's surveillance team had reported, moments before the explosion that bared the conduit to the rebel X-wings. Apparently, the knight had sensed the rebels' ploy. And naturally, infuriatingly, in true arrogant, inadmissible Ren-fashion, had decided to confront the intruders himself. Alone. Ren could have alerted Phasma's men – taken a squad with him, a personal guard, a sniper, _anything_.

But no. Instead Ren had opted for a dramatic one-man stand-off.

And a traitorous whelp, an old man, and an even older wookie apparently proved too much for him to handle.

A dry, mirthless laugh breaks in Hux's throat. He'd sent down twenty heavy-assault troopers as soon as surveillance made the report. But of course, by then it had been too late.

And yet.

Hux dabs the cream on his face. Snoke wanted Ren back. Had bid Hux have his men retrieve the knight, to 'complete his training.' Did Snoke wish to punish the knight, himself? What possible abilities could this petulant, overgrown child, helpless in Hux's greatcoat behind him possess, that made the Supreme Leader so eager to forgive?

And if Ren's utter and complete lack of tactical skill wasn't grounds for termination, should not then he, General Hux, whose TIE-pilots flawlessly defended against the rebel squadron until Ren's father's overgrown pet exposed the oscillator from within, also be spared the firing squad?

Hux drops the cream back into the kit and reseals the casing. Tries to channel his quietly rising ire into the task at hand, as per usual; letting his anger cool, harden, freeze over. It was better to rule with a block of ice for a heart. One generally made fewer reckless, impulsive, foolhardy decisions that way.

Like breaking security protocol and commandeering a rescue mission oneself, rather than sending any number of qualified men to do so.

He won't be making this mistake again.

If he survives it.

“Stop!”

The shout comes from Ren, that much is clear. Hux snorts, eyes rolling. He's about to tell Ren no, there is no meal service on this flight, and that he'll have to wait before he can get his pillow fluffed, or a flute of champagne handed to him – but then he feels a tremor. A quake beneath his feet.

What on – Ren is springing from the litter, the greatcoat still tied around him following. Hux turns at the sound to see the knight half-crawling, half-rolling away. Without understanding, Hux follows him, and suddenly the sandy earth beneath them is churning.

Ren is about to fling himself, Hux can recognize the same coiling body language that left him stranded in the shuttle hours ago. _Oh no you don't you dodgey son-of-_

Hux only barely manages to grab hold of Ren's robes in time. Ren goes flying forward maybe eight meters, snarling audibly with the added weight of Hux hanging onto his cloak behind him. They land just a few feet shy of where a dune worm is surfacing. Both men stare as it rises, Hux already facing it, Ren craning his head around behind him. A thick, plated column tearing out of the earth, like a sand burrower, but far larger, worming up into the air. It whips its ugly, three-sided beak towards them, unhinges its jaws, and roars.

Well, shit.

  



	4. Tunnel Vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which combat breeds camaraderie, but Ren remains an emo git._

The worm dives them. They've moments before it's bearing down, and the two men dash apart in opposite directions, as it pile drives maw-first into the space where they'd been standing a second prior. Hux takes off running with a curse. There's a roiling, gravelly din growing louder behind him, and he glances over his shoulder midrun to confirm his spiking panic: the worm is tearing through the sandy earth after him.

Hux curses viciously, spitting insults, loosing his custom blaster from the holster at his side, adrenaline fuelling his overworked legs. Why the bloody hell had the monster gone after him? Ren better not have 'Forced' his way out of it.

Hux fires behind him as he darts, sand and earth flying to either side as the worm drags itself toward him at a startling pace, given its certainly incredible weight. Hux catches sight of black and jagged red through the spray – Ren might be following alongside.

“You can jump in any time!” Hux shouts at the knight between blasts. His fire is hitting the worm, he can hear it in the impact, but sod him if the monster doesn't seem to be bothered over-much by it. Maybe he's just pissing it off more.

Ren, it seems, interprets Hux's comment in a rather literal sense, because when Hux next whips his head back to fire off another round, he sees the knight Force-leaping past, intercepting the worm's path towards him, swinging with his saber at its hideous maw. Hux stills his fire with a curse, still running full-tilt.

The worm's roar reverberates through him, setting every hair on edge. One of the three plates of its beak goes sailing free, shorn by Ren's blade. Ren lands in a low crouch, one leg folded and the other stretched, one hand braced on the earth, with his saber-hand still extended.

The worm turns onto its new assailant.

Hux continues to run, still firing, aiming as best he can towards the wound Ren's opened up. He hopes for the knight's sake Ren has enough sense not to try and wait for the worm to dive him to swing – even if he killed the creature on impact, its falling corpse would undoubtedly crush him.

Ren does have sense enough, Hux discovers, with equal measure of relief and frustration, and instead dodges the worm barrelling down onto him with another leap, this time in Hux's direction.

Hux pauses only long enough to see if Ren clears the assault before resuming his sprint, the burn in his own de-oxygenated muscles becoming harder to ignore. Ren is loping towards him inelegantly, movements heavy and rather lop-sided, saber still extended, flashing through the heat-hazed air.

Behind, the worm has curved back towards them, relentless in pursuit.

They can't outrun it, Hux realizes, near hysterical, continuing to unload his blaster over his shoulder. They have to take it down. Which is bloody well easier said than done.

Ren suddenly comes to a halt, and, like a discus-thrower, hurls his lightsaber towards the monster. It catapults through the air, gaining momentum as it spins, unstable edges pushing and dragging and tearing through the air on its path.

Hux is expecting to see the saber spin gracefully through the worm's neck like a propeller blade, before boomeranging back to Ren's hand.

He isn't expecting it to get stuck.

“Ren!” Hux barks, incredulous, as the knight tumbles forward onto his knees with effort, hand outstretched, trying to jerk the blade back with the Force from where it's been lodged in the worm's armour-plating. It won't budge. Apparently, neither will Ren. The worm is still barrelling towards them, the lightsaber lodged to one side of its head.

“Ren!!” Hux doubles back towards the knight, grabs him by the scruff of the collar and takes off at the best run he can manage, Ren dragging along behind him, shouting in senseless rage, limbs flailing, still trying to dislodge his saber with the Force.

Hux fires off three more blasts midrun into the worm behind him with his free hand. He knows they've connected in way they hadn't before, because he can hear the pitch in the worm's roaring change.

“Let GO of me!” Ren screams, voice unhinged, wringing himself free. Hux keeps running but looks behind. Ren is still on his ass, hand outstretched. The saber's not moving. And the worm is still charging towards him.

Hux hasn't the faintest sodding idea what the fuck Ren thinks he's going to accomplish, because he's currently about ten meters from a close-up view of the worm's digestive tract.

He about-faces, emptying his clip at its head, as fast as his custom blaster can fire. He snaps a flare loose from the outside casing of the survival kit slung around his shoulders with his other hand. Fires it off, too. Every shot is connecting with the gash Ren's prior attack had opened up, and while he is a phenomenal shot, Hux is beginning to suspect the knight's involvement. His suspicion is confirmed when he looses a grenade from the pack, and it sails directly into the worm's open beak at what can't be the most logical trajectory, considering how the creature had raised its head after he'd thrown it.

The worm reels. They've no other visual confirmation of the explosion – its head doesn't explode into pulp and charred flesh, as Hux had half-heartedly hoped it might, but the monster twists and writhes in what must be pain and anger, beginning to drag itself back underground.

It disappears with a spray of sand that rains down on them, and suddenly the baked plane falls eerily silent once more.

“Don't. Move.” snarls Ren in a half-whisper, as if Hux hasn't already figured that out, thank you very much. They both stand frozen to the spot.

“Ren,” Hux growls softly.

“Shh!!”

Hux looses another grenade – one of three remaining. Hurls it as far as he can, to the north, the opposite direction they're heading. Ren wheels on him without moving his feet, but the general sees the realization dawn in the knight's expression half-snarl. Hux tosses a still-pinned grenade toward Ren lightly, nodding his head north.

Ren throws it, aided with the Force, it lands much farther back the way they'd come, barely visible in the heat-shimmering air.

Hux holds his breath as what must be the worm ripples just below the sandy earth near that second impact, like a massive shark through yellow spray. It seems to be working. He passes the fourth grenade to Ren, who whips it out of sight, and the ripples follow, until they're no longer visible.

Neither man dares move his feet for the greater part of an hour. Thankfully, blissfully, it's starting to go dark. Hux checks his blaster. The powercell has maybe ten rounds left. He starts shaking the sand out of his uniform, carefully. Ren is slumped forward, still on his arse, head hanging between his shoulders.

Hux tosses an energy drink tetrapack in his direction, and it smacks Ren in the back, a little harder than intended. He gets somewhat concerned when there's no snarling reaction.

Hux walks over, slowly, picking up the tetrapack as he goes, dropping to one knee beside Ren. Shakes the knight's shoulder, a little on the gentle side.

“Ren.” Hux opens the pack and holds it up to his mouth.

Ren's eyes are unfocused again, but he pushes Hux's arm away, so rough it almost knocks the pack from the general's outstretched hand.

“Alright, fine.” Hux huffs and stands up out of the reach of Ren's futile anger, taking a drink himself, instead. “Be that way.”

  
  



	5. Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Ren predictably suffers from nightmares, and Hux isn't the least bit sorry for him. Really._

 

General Hux of the First Order and Kylo Ren of the Knights of Ren spend their first night on the planet camped out near a few wind-bent shrubs, which is the best that could be found for shelter. Night's the better time to be travelling, away from the unbearable forty-odd degrees centigrade of the daytime suns, but Hux is exhausted, and Ren has, following his earlier exertions, reverted back to being dead weight. It must be more than twenty-four hours now since Hux'd woken up on the Finalizer the previous day, though it already feels like he's spent a thousand and one days in this oven.

Ren's lost his saber, they're out four grenades, one medipac and all but ten bullets, and the knight's been out cold again for hours – but all in all, Hux considers it a favourable outcome. As favourable as could be expected, given the circumstances.

Hux settles Ren beneath one of the stretches of shrubs, and offloads their supplies. His overworked muscles complain. He's pulled something in his back, and his left hamstring, by the feel of it. Hux checks his own ribs. There doesn't seem to be anything broken. His wrist, though, the one that had broken their fall back on the Starkiller's surface, is swollen. He should probably put it in a brace, but he doesn't have one. He makes a note of using his other hand as much as possible.

Hux lays back in the sandy earth, removing his boots. He'd kill his way to a good cup of tea, if that were an option. He sips sparingly at the energy drink instead, sighing.

Predictably enough, the night temperature of this arid sub-desert is plummeting. There's nothing but the shrubs to burn, and those wouldn't burn for longer than a couple of hours. The scant shelter they provide from the sandy wind is likely more valuable, the general decides. To his left, past the small pile of supplies, Ren stirs, the swiftly chilling air perhaps rousing him.

“And where are you going?” Hux drawls, not rising, coolly watching Ren struggle to get to his feet.

“Have to take a leak,” Ren mutters unhappily, managing at best a hobbling crouch.

Hux settles back against the sand. “Try not to piss on your skirt,” he snipes over his shoulder, receiving something like a hiss in response.

Ren more or less crawls back to where they've set up camp. Frowns at Hux's greatcoat as he returns, still on the ground where he'd been lying in it. He grabs it up with one hand, tosses it at the general. Hux grimaces as it showers him with sand.

Ren lies back down on insulation-blanket, instead. Hux sniffs his disinterest, and begins shaking the sand out of his attire, for a second time that night.

The knight seems to be back out of it by the time he's moderately satisfied – though every piece of his once-immaculately pressed uniform has now been thoroughly sand-blasted, dust-streaked, crumpled and creased.

Ren doesn't wake to the sounds of Hux opening one of the field rations. It's not a good sign. Hux chews thoughtfully, deciding to let the knight sleep, for now, and to wake him to eat instead in the morning.

He wraps himself in his greatcoat, some sort of horrible, exhaustion-fuelled bliss seeping like brandy through his limbs.

He's woken by Ren's nightmare.

Hux can't make out words, but Ren is tossing, muttering, a muffled shout escaping what sounds like his tightly clenched jaw every now and again. Hux lies newly awakened listening to it, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

He refuses to wake the knight. What for? To get a snarl and an insult for his efforts?

He studies the night sky, instead, trying to get a sense of where in the galaxy they've landed. It's a clear night, and he can make out what must be a powerful pulsar, blinking evenly at roughly seven o'clock. There's a steady bright glare at about eleven, and from the shifted orientation of the galaxy's lead stars and constellations, Hux concludes they're likely somewhere bordering Hutt space in the Outer Rim. Between it and Wild Space, if he's not mistaken, and that pulsar is in fact the Godsheart. Just perfect.

Ren's nightmare eventually dies down, but is replaced by new concerning development. Hux can hear him shaking. He lifts his head, just so he can see over survival kit and medipacs that are piled between them. Ren is curled in on himself, now half-wrapped in the foil blanket, sweat beading his too-pale face, that slash bisecting it starting to bleed again. Shivering. Hux sighs, fighting his instincts. He isn't sure which has triumphed, exactly, when he rises to drape his greatcoat over Ren. He returns to his place and settles back, now a good few degrees too cold himself in the plummeting night-time temperature. Decidedly does _not_ consider the possibility of lying closer to Ren.

At least the sandy earth provides relative comfort beneath. It could be worse.

When Hux wakes in the pre-dawn, thirst and an uncomfortable ill-feeling rousing him, he tries to stir Ren awake. Ren's unresponsive, though he seems to be breathing alright, if rather shallowly.

Hux packs their supplies, pulls the knight back into the litter and heads off south, the same direction Ren had indicated the day prior. At least there isn't much terrain to navigate around.

 

It's almost the dawn on the next day when their fortune changes.

Hux hadn't bothered trying to rest again at night: he'd stimmed himself and kept walking. Ren was still out of it, though breathing deeper now, and somewhat steady; and Hux's ever-growing frustration at having to drag the knight's not-insignificant weight through the broiling desert grappled bitterly with the blessed relief of at least being spared said knight's tiresome commentary throughout the ordeal.

When he spots the lights and shapes of what can only be a small settlement in the distance ahead, he lets the litter down with a sigh of reprieve. Rewards himself with a drink.

“ 'Right, sunshine.” He nudges Ren with a dusty boot. “We're here.”

 


	6. The Yinchorri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux is unaccustomed to dealing with civilians._

No response.

Hux rubs his chin, annoyed to find his stubble at a length he hasn't felt for years, considering whether he should conceal Ren here and investigate, or go down together. He decides on the latter – perhaps it's best not to become separated. Besides, coherent or no, and in spite of his tenuous grip on consciousness, the knight seems rather useful, in a pinch.

The settlement they've come is little more than a sandswept village, Hux realizes with sinking displeasure. He isn't quite sure what he'd been hoping for. A spaceport, a roaring metropolis? He sneers at himself.

The village seems to be built up around a small oasis. Hux can see the change in the earth as he approaches, a well-worn path meandering between a scattering of small fruit trees, gnarled and warped by the wind. Sun-baked, pale stone walls surround the settlement, but no guards stand at their open gates as he passes, Ren and supplies dragging behind him.

It's a woefully backwater little hamlet: beaten earth roads, stone and baked clay huts with thatched roofs. A central well. _Beasts_ of burden, rather than parked vehicles, Hux notes with a cringe: eeopies, banthas, dewbacks, one or two species he doesn't recognize. Nor ever wishes to.

The round windows of the huts are shuttered and closed, and he hasn't yet caught sight of a single inhabitant. It's still some time to dawn, if the previous night was any guide. From where he's standing, Hux can see the unmistakable flicker and glow of a neon sign down the road, half-unlit, buzzing fitfully atop what must be the largest building in the town.

The cantina. Of course. From the faint, rhythmic sounds working their way up the empty street in the failing night air, and the slits of light streaming from the cracks of its shut windows, the establishment hasn't yet closed for the night. Hux frowns, letting the litter and supplies down by the central stone well. While a cantina is far from a traditional organ of authority, he knows they often serve a centre of commerce and illicit exchange, and therefore by extension power, in such border towns. At the very least, they might direct him to the village's policiary force. If there is one.

Hux leaves Ren by the well. He won't be gone long. He can't help but pull up some water, though he resists the urge to dunk his head in, instead washing his face, neck and hands. Dusts himself, arranges his hair, letting down the sleeves of his now-hopelessly crumpled uniform jacket, buttoning it up. Marches the short way to the cantina. Throws open its swinging doors.

“Your attention!” Hux barks as he enters, bootheels ringing on the stone floor, the smokey air parting as he strides in. The music and chatter dies down, the locals turn from their drinks to face him. Yinchorri – hulking lizardmen comprise the absolute majority, though there's a handful of Rhodians and the odd Toydarian packed around the dingy bar to his left, the stained sabacc tables on the right. A single Yuuzhan Vong reclines in a rear booth, skin-grafts and vonduun armour stinging like a bad omen as the general takes in the scene. Not a customer in the joint without a blaster at their side. It doesn't shake him.

“I am a General of the First Order. My craft has experienced a major malfunction, and I require immediate access to a long-range communications array, as well as medical services. Your cooperation will be generously rewarded. Refuse, and you will not be met with mercy.”

There's a discomforting silence. The band has paused mid-note, the bartender mid-pour, the gamblers mid-bet. It drags on for a second, two, three, with little more than an unreadable, minute shuffling of drunks in their seats as the tension in the smokey dive mounts.

And then the room erupts into laughter.

They don't believe him. Hux can feel himself going red. He tries to redouble, tries to draw up his already razor-straight back.

“I repeat, as a General of the Fir–”

A local shoves past him, throwing him off, another one leans over from the bar and claps him on the shoulder, gargling something.

“Don't _touch_ me,” Hux balks as if burned, and on the recoil jostles into a yinchorri seated at a cramped table behind him, who spills his drink as a result. The turtleish reptile rises to his feet, toppling his chair as he goes, demanding to be repaid.

It suddenly dawns on Hux that he doesn't have any credits on him.

The yinchorri shoves a massive, scaly palm against the general's chest, clamouring for reimbursement. A crowd is drawing. Out of the corner of his eye, Hux can see bets already being slammed down around the bar.

And General Hux may have attained the highest grade of distinction in three different forms of deadly, hand-to-hand combat, but he swiftly discovers he's no match for a seven-foot-eight, three-hundred-fifty pound lizard man and his eight-foot-six, four-hundred pound drunken brother.

Hux concludes the impact to the side of his face (grazing as it was) must have taken him out for a moment, because there's a blackish haze surrounding the events between the start of the fight and being tossed out on his arse, half-pushed, half-thrown out the saloon door, landing roughly near Ren and the well. Raucous, drunken laughter and the odd muttered “general” fade behind him as the batwing doors swing back shut.

That's how the general came to spend his first night at the Yinchorri settlement nursing a fat lip.

  
  



	7. Bad Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux and Ren carefully consider killing one another, and Hux ends up two fingers inside him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I've created a[little album](//imgur.com/a/BGAmN/layout/horizontal#0) of some of my visual inspirations while writing this. It contains a floorplan of the hut because I'm a fucking idiot and make floorplans for one-room shacks._   
>    
> 

“What the hell happened to you?” Ren growls, voice gravelly with disuse, coming to in the midday heat. Hux watches the knight squint, visibly confused at his new surroundings. They're in a stone hut, one of a handful of abandoned homes Hux had found near the village's walls. Apparently the settlement's population wasn't exactly booming. Ren is laid out on the single hard, straw-stuffed mattress on the east side. There's a large window past the head of the alcoved bed, its wooden shutters mostly drawn. And little else but the dust-covered shelves and a table past the foot of the bed, a rickety-looking backdoor.

“Had a chat with the locals,” Hux drawls through his purpling, split lip, rolling his shoulder. “Pleased to see you're among the living. I would hate to have spent two days and two nights dragging your arse through the desert for nothing.”

“You will address me with respect, General,” Ren begins, drawing himself up onto his elbows with a hiss. Hux turns on him from the meal he's got cooking on a gas hotplate.

“In case it has escaped your knowledge, _Knight of Ren_ , or been knocked from your head in the crash, you do not outrank me. Not on the Finalizer, nor the Starkiller, nor anywhere within the First Order.”

“Yes, and where are we?” Ren snaps, only slightly deflated.

Hux exhales sharply, returns to stirring the metal pot. “Atrani Six, if the locals are to be trusted. About halfway between Teth and Droxu, but on the outside of the Triellius Trade Route.”

“Atrani Six? Never heard of it.”

“Neither have I, which likely means it's one of the uncharted hellrocks on the bad side of Hutt Space. Which means it won't be among the first places the First Order goes looking for us. If they haven't already assumed our shuttle was downed in the blast.”

“So the Starkiller Base has been destroyed.”

“..Yes.” Hux's hand stills. Ren sniffs, almost disparagingly, but Hux doesn't have the energy to address it. Thirty years of construction. The culmination of decades worth of groundbreaking, imperial engineering and research into hyperspace tunneling and dark energy translation. Gone, in a matter of moments, to a handful of explosive charges placed by a traitorous whelp, a half-starved scavenger, an old man, and his filthy beast.

Hux is allowed to cook the rest in silence. Laves some onto a high-rimmed metal plate, and drops it on the wooden chair by the bed. “Eat,” he grumbles, serving himself.

Ren sniffs at the blueish porridge. “What's this?”

Hux shrugs, “some kind of local rice and rehydrated baantha milk.” There were a few dusty bags of each in the cupboards at the back. He blows on a spoonful before tasting, and grimaces. “Needs salt.”

Ren frowns, giving it an experimental taste. Frowns all the more afterward, and Hux's brain only partly registers the string of complaints that follows. Something overcooked something slop something tasteless. But Ren wolfs it down, all the same, his spoon scraping the plate. Grows notably restless, all too soon, eyes focussed on Hux like he's expecting something from him. A look which the general pointedly ignores, blowing calmly on his own spoonfuls, sipping slowly. Ren turns his attention to the navcom radio laid out on the table, instead. Rises and hobbles the short way over, sinking with effort into the wooden chair.

“A blown transistor,” Hux explains, unable to stay silent with Ren rooting around in the open circuitry like an oversized womp-rat in a trash bin. “Shouldn't be difficult to replace.”

“The hyper-comm amplifier's fried,” Ren corrects.

“What.” Hux puts his spoon down a bit too fast.

“It's shorted,” Ren nudges the offending piece's casing with a long finger, “probably what blew the transistor.”

Hux pinches the bridge of his nose. Fucking fantastic. Where were they going to get hold of a hyper-comm amplifier in this filthy, backwater – “I take it you don't have any credits on you?” Sodding defective hardware. Hux makes a mental note of tracking down the manufacturer as soon as he's blessedly back in First Order space.

“Credits?” Ren seems momentarily thrown by the question, “no.”

“Then we have a problem.”

Ren takes a second before scoffing. “If you knew the ways of the Force, you would not see it as an obstacle. You would realize how malleable simple minds are. How easy it can be, to take what you need."

Hux raises an eyebrow, a mirthless grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Indeed? As you took what you needed from the scavenger girl?”

The knight casts his eyes away, indignant, face darkening with shame. “I took what I needed from pilot! The scavenger is... different. She should be converted, trained.”

“Should she? I recall she bested you, without it. Imagine what she'd be capable of with even half of your magician's training–”

Ren shoots his hand out, and Hux feels the icey drag of what he can assume is the Force against him. It fails to come as a shock. In a way, he's almost surprised it's taken this long. He leans into it, laughing raggedly as his throat begins to constrict, the idiocy of all his recent choices piling into him one after another.

“By all.. means,” Hux struggles out, “murder the man... who saved your life.”

The pressure builds like frost bursting along his skin, like the air around him has gone still, like all motion has ceased.

And then it lifts, and Hux pitches forward a bit with the strength of his resistance as Ren's invisible hold is released.

The next moments are too silent, Hux masking his breathlessness with as slow and quiet intakes as he can manage. His finger twitches near his custom blaster in its holster at his side.

Ren avoids his gaze. Hux likes to look a man in the eyes. Get a good read on him. He wonders how accurate Ren's own method can be. He wonders if Ren can move his hand faster than a blaster fires – which is roughly a klick per second. He wonders if Ren can hear him, thinking it over.

The knight rises heavily to his feet, sags over to the window, tilting the wooden shutters open, just enough to see out of, peering through with a squint.

Hux has an even better shot at him now that Ren's back is half-turned.

He decides against it.

Ren's like a startled kath hound, barking and snapping. His little display a show of force, rather literally. A warning, a demonstration. A bluff.

Ren's groan pulls the general from his train of thought.

“Yinchorri.”

“...Yes,” Hux replies, watching him carefully. “Primitive beasts. What of them?”  
  
“They're able to.. resist the influences of the Force. Like the Yuuzhan Vong. The Hutts. Bardottans. Toydarians.”

Hux rubs a freckled hand over his face. Oh, brilliant. Of course the parlour tricks came with a caveat.

Ren beings to hobble back toward the bed, but doesn't make it past the table, where he stops abruptly with a hiss, expression frozen in badly concealed pain. One pale hand clutches at the table, the other clasps tightly at his injured side.

Hux sighs. He supposes a proper treatment of the knight's gaping chest wound is about three days overdue. And in lieu of any minutely reliable medicare in this village, or the ability to pay for it, he supposes he's going to have to do it himself.

It would be easier to dredge up some sympathy if the man hadn't been strangling him a moment prior.

No – on second thought, he doesn't need sympathy for this. Ren's a malfunctioning warmachine. There's really no point in berating a faulty heatsink for giving you third-degree burns.

Hux lifts the emergency first aid kit he'd dragged through the desert onto the table, and searches for the tranquilizer. “We need to have a look at that,” he motions toward the empty chair. Ren seems to resist, at first, mulling it over. Eventually he takes the seat. And snarls when he catches sight of the vial.

“ _No_. No tranquilizers _._ ”

Hux considers, fingers stilling over the sterile packaging. He shrugs, taking out the local anaesthetic darts instead. “Have it your way.”

“No tranquilizers, no anaesthetic. I will not numb myself to pain.”

Hux rolls his eyes, deeply unimpressed as always with the knight's theatrics. “I assure you, Ren, while I presently would like nothing better than to return your aborted attempts at torture, I'm not about risk being slammed into the walls or further throttled in whatever subconscious knee-jerk reactions you're bound to lose control of when I'm two inches into your bowels with surgical steel.”

Ren grimaces, holding his gaze unhappily. Relents, dropping his arm from the wound and leaning back to expose it. Hux moves forward to inject the anaesthetic. Sets some water to boil on the hotplate in the meantime. Dons the kit's surgical gloves after washing his hands in the basin by the back, Ren stripping the top half of his robes and shirt with some effort.

The wound is leaking visibly. The emergency second-skin has mostly detached, and it isn't difficult to pull the rest free. A thick trail of blood leads down the knight's side, into his trousers, dried around the edges, fresh in the centre. Ren hisses as he sprays the area down with antiseptic.

“I'll have to take a look,” he warns, bringing his fingers over the gash. Ren nods, and Hux gently slides two fingers in. Fresh blood sloshes out. The knight snarls but holds still, hands clenching.

“Do you know what you're doing?” he bites out.

“Mm, you'd better hope so.” Hux slides his fingertips around, slowly, sweeping, trying to feel for further ruptures. Ren shakes as he presses in deeper, careful, searching. When he pulls out Ren exhales, eyes gone cloudy.

“Lucky boy, there doesn't seem to be any organ damage. I'm going to sew, now. Ren?” he holds up the steel needle, threading. Ren nods shakily, sweat beading his forehead.

He stays surprisingly still as the needle penetrates, though his fists are knuckled white at his sides, and he's breathing hard through a clenched jaw, making growls of pain. Hux tunnels his focus into the task at hand, pausing every now and again when Ren jerks slightly.

“You have a remarkable tolerance for pain,” Hux offers when he's about halfway, not looking up from his task, drawing the needle through black-bruised flesh. Ren hisses and snorts above him. “Though I suppose that's necessary,” Hux continues, “given your proclivity to disaster.”

“Do you ever shut your mouth?” Ren snarls out and jerks beneath him, pushing Hux's hand away, until the thread leading to his side is taught between them.

They look at each other, now, head on. Hux has seen more of this taciturn man in the last two days than in his lifetime of service, prior.

Ren drops his hand.

Hux continues in silence, save for the odd grunt of pain from his reluctant patient. Ties and clips the last of the stitching, feeling Ren's bruise-darkened ribs above the freshly sealed gash for injury. It's soft, a bit concerningly so, particularly when he examines the other side for reference. Ribs heal on their own, though, and the knight doesn't seem to have particular trouble breathing, or smart-mouthing, so Hux concludes he doesn't have a sucking chest wound.

He's quickly washing the blood from the wound with a wetted sponge when a slash on the knight's forearm gives him pause. No – it's an older wound, though still pink-red and angry-looking. In fact, there are more of them. They look like small welts, or burns? Only a few centimeters in diameter. What kind of combat or training would produce such – but Ren draws away, recoiling, and Hux leaves it. Deposits the sponge into the knight's lap instead.

Reaches for the antiseptic spray and empties what's left of it over the stitches, once Ren is done mopping.

“Let it dry,” he indicates, peeling off the bloodied gloves to right the kit.

 

 


	8. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux fixes a fridge, gets propositioned, and Ren secretly has abandonment issues._

“Two hundred credits.”

“Two- _hundred-_!” Hux steels himself. He can feel his face going red. He's at the junk dealer's, the closest thing to technology and civilization in this backwater hamlet. Though that's exaggerating the competence of these lizards by quite a bit.

“One hundred.” He snaps back.

“One fifty.” The dealer crosses her arms.  
  
“One hundred credits,” Hux repeats, “and I fix that leaking coolant on your jumpspeeder, unless you'd like to get stranded next time you're scavenging in the desert.”

The yinchorri looks between the general and the jumpspeeder, a damp patch pooling in the dust beneath it. “Ahh. Deal. Only..” she pauses with a fanged grin. “These are the badlands, you know? Not much use for credits.”

“ _Then why did you-_ ” Hux stops himself from emptying his clip into this scaly slag's head, though only just barely.

“To determine value, yes? The bar takes them. I have a tab, there. Thirty-three galactic credits. You speak to the bartender. Tell him Kaza sent you. He gives you a job, you work off the debt. We knock thirty-three credits from the price.” She taps the amplifier with a jagged claw. “Ken?”

Hux straightens his jacket. “Very well.”

 

He marches the short distance over to the cantina. Doesn't let his last graceless visit slow his approach. There's already a few regulars drinking, though it's barely noon. And that yuuzhan vong in the back booth. Hux approaches the counter, ignoring the odd coarse chuckle of “general.”

“I am here to settle the junker's debt.”

The barkeep turns, polishing a filthy glass. “Eh?”

“Kaza.”

The barkeep scratches the side of his head. “So pay.”

Hux prays to the stars for forbearance, to still his hand from call of the trigger. “She's short on credits. I will work off the debt.”

A few sniggers go up from customers. Hux prays harder.

“Work? You?” The barkeep appraises him, “I'd clear the tab if you could carry half the load of a yinchorri.”

“Yes, I'm not a packmule, thank you. What about the sign?”

The barkeep stares at him in response.

“The sign outside,” Hux starts again, over-pronouncing. “It's broken. I can fix it for you. Would that settle the debt?”

The barkeep shrugs, “around here, everyone knows me. What good is a sign?”

Hux resumes praying.

“The cooler, though,” the barkeep continues after another moment's polishing, nodding his head at a freezer unit over his shoulder. “Keeps breaking down. Have to hit it to get it running. You can fix it?”

“I can fix it,” Hux agrees.

“And the sign,” the barkeep adds.

“ _You just said_ –” Hux silences himself with a sharp inhale. “Fine.” Dodgey conniving foul primitive– “and the sign.”

 

He's face up on the floor at the back of the bar, unscrewing the thermostat assembly of the powered down freezer when the owner steps out for a smoke, and the yhuuzan vong from the booth comes to him.

“Looking for work?” the voice is like an adder's rasp. Hux shoots his new visitor a look, but doesn't let his hands still.

“Seems I've found it,” the general replies, pulling the casing open.

The alien chuckles, folding his arms across his chest and leaning one shoulder against the wall.

“One week,” he holds out a taloned forefinger, “you serve my client. Three-thousand credits.”

Hux's hand slips from the casing, and he wipes his palm on the work-rag laid out across his thigh to conceal the cause.

“Awful lot of credits for a dusty little town like this,” he reaches for the multimeter, shooting the vong another look. “Why me?”

The alien chuckles again. “My client doesn't like yinchorri.”

Ah. Trust his pretty face to bring the pimps calling.

“Not interested,” Hux puts the multimeter aside as the reading checks out, and begins to replace the casing.

“Think about it, little red. Or maybe it's _big_ red?”

The general grits his teeth behind a placid smile. “Don't let it keep you up at night.”

 

* * *

 

"It's too HOT!" Ren moans, writhing in the bed like he's being scalded.

Hux drops the gun duffel that's been doubling as his work bag. It stands to reason Kylo Ren bitching is the first thing that greets him when he gets home. He'd like nothing better than to drag Ren past the stoop and lock him out for the night. Instead, he strides over to the back door and hooks it open. Perhaps between that and the window, it'll make a bit of a draft.

"Why did you have to land on this sith-forsaken planet!" Ren snarls, tossing. Hux swallows another growl. This thankless _,_ unappreciative, self-centered _-_

"Because I fancied a sunny vacation, lie _still!_ Unless you'd like to add internal bleeding to your predicament."

"At least I'd feel something besides this kriffing heat."

Hux takes a deep breath, approaching the wash basin. He isn't sure Ren is the slightest bit aware of how ridiculous he can sound. "And where have _you_ been?" Ren continues, leaning forward in bed suspiciously. Hux's hands still on the edges of the basin, and he has to count to three.

"Where I have _been_ , Lord Ren," Hux says, splashing tepid water on his face and chest, "is cleaning out the condenser of the bar's freezing unit, removing burnt out sections from its sign, and repairing its old transformer, in direct sunlight, for which I've earned an astonishing twenty-one credits towards the hundred we need for a hyper-comm amplifier. While _you'_ ve been lazing in a cool room, sleeping till evening."

“So task me, General. You took off without saying anything. What should I have assumed had happened?”

Hux pauses momentarily from working the bar soap into a lather. Well.

“As expected, there is no hyper-comm capability available in this village,” he begins, deflecting the uncomfortable admittance of vulnerability. “But the junk dealer happened to have an imperial-era amplifier lying around. The piece is probably older than I am, and too high voltage for our radio, by the looks of it. Perhaps you could install a new converter and more power cells.”

“Fine,” Ren mutters, “just get me the parts.”

“They're in the bag,” Hux finishes washing his arms. Why hadn't he thought to pick up a razor? If the yinchorri had such a thing.

“Well?” he inquires when he turns back around, towel across his neck, to see that Ren hasn't moved.

"I work better at night," Ren grumbles.

"Yes, I'm sure you do. With no light?"

It takes Ren more than a moment to understand what he means, by the look of it.

"There's no electricity in this shack, in case you haven't noticed," Hux drawls, motioning to the blank stone ceiling with a wet hand. "I hope you enjoy soldering wires by moonlight."

Ren scoffs, turning on his side towards the wall, away from Hux. It's his injured side he's turned on, and he sucks in what sounds like a pained breath.

Hux tosses the wet towel at his head. "Don't lie on it," he orders.

Ren tears it off his face, rolling onto his back to fix Hux with a glare. When it doesn't seem to get the reaction he'd been hoping for, he settles back down, replacing the damp cloth over his face.

"Why don't we just steal it?" Ren mutters from underneath the towel, after a moment.

Hux shakes his head, not that Ren can see him. "I wouldn't advise it. We need time to install the amplifier, and since I've already expressed my interest in the part to the dealer, the entire town would know where to go looking, should it suddenly disappear.”

"You should have been more discrete," Ren critiques.

 _I should have left you in the snow,_ Hux grumbles under his breath.

 


	9. Dirty Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux gets his hands on Ren's knickers, though not in the good way._

Hux has had a long day. He's gone about sixty-five hours on four hours of sleep at this point, having rested for only a short few in the morning, after finding the hut, before Ren came to. It's barely sundown, but retiring into a blissful lack of consciousness is already looking like far less of the nuisance Hux usually finds it to be. Anything to escape this infuriating situation for a few moments.

He had thought perhaps Ren would be _up_ when he returned from the degrading tedium of manual labour, so they'd be able to take turns on the single bed. With the way the knight's long limbs are still sprawled lazily across it, though, Hux supposes that won't be happening. So he removes his boots and shirt, uncurls the bedroll he'd spent those couple hours in the morning on, and collapses on it.

It's pre-dawn when he wakes. Ren's asleep, or meditating, as difficult as it is to imagine the man capable of such a thing, the cover pulled all the way over his face. The radio has had some work done on it, though, by the look of it.

Hux washes up and is about to leave when Ren's complaints from the previous day return to him. The general can certainly appreciate wanting to know every Order member's mission and location, whether they're his direct subordinates or not. Perhaps especially if not.

But he certainly isn't about to rouse the man with a line that's going to end up sounding horrifyingly close to some rendition of “well honey, I'm off to work!”

So Hux simply resolves to making some more noise than is strictly necessary, as he leaves.

He's wrists deep in the engine of the junk dealer Kaza's jumpspeeder when the crick in his neck and his sore lower back from spending the night on the floor really start to give him trouble. He pauses from his work, stretching out his worn muscles. Considers the possibility of stealing the bike, once he's done with the repairs.

It's code-locked, of course. He could get it at gunpoint, he's got a few rounds left, and while he's noted the pistol at Kaza's side, he's willing to bet his life he's a faster draw than any of these brutes.

But the village is tiny, and they'd need time, not to mention shelter away from the blowing sand, to install the amplifier. There isn't even any guarantee it would work, when installed. They might need other parts. Not to mention they'd need to _wait_ on a response from the First Order, unless Hux wants to order a rescue mission for two corpses, which is likely what they'd be when the junker's aggravated relatives caught up with them. There wasn't exactly anything nearby to run to, or hide in. Not on a one-man jumpspeeder with limited fuel. Not in this coverless wasteland. Not with Ren half-conscious.

It takes longer than expected. He thinks it's the core plugs, visibly corroded by rust and wear, but after replacing them and having Kaza start the engine and keep it running, the leak hasn't stopped. Which means it's likely a gasket, cylinder head or block.

He's predictably grimey by the time he's done, though luckily most of his uniform has been spared. He really needs a shower.

Kaza laughs, a throaty, infuriating sound when he inquires after one. Makes a comment that Hux chooses, for his own sake to ignore, something about prissy off-worlders. She does have an emergency chemical burn station though, Hux notes, its pipes dusty with disuse. The tank is empty. Hux has to drag the water there himself. And General Hux of the First Order never thought washing himself with diluted detergent and what he prayed wasn't parasite-ridden water in a backwater junk dealer's ancient chemburn station was a situation he'd ever derive a modicum of relief from, and yet here he was. After all, the shower, however tragic its circumstances, was at least three days overdue.

He almost cringes to put his same clothes back on. His thoughts stray vaguely to Ren's own clothing, which must be discomfortingly caked with layers of old blood. And while the knight's comfort isn't exactly his top priority, Hux has given more than one daily motivational on the importance good hygiene and cleanliness in the service, _particularly_ during field duty. Ren's already heavily injured, bitter, lazy, next-to-useless. He doesn't need to add 'infected' to that list.

 

Hux comes home cursing, carrying two buckets of freshly-boiled water in straining arms.

Ren is sleeping. Sodding of course. He snaps his towel an inch from Ren's face to rouse him.

“Hey, arsehole. Laundry day. Strip.”

Ren does, grumbling, but stays under the cover, tossing his clothes out onto the floor.  
  
“Bedsheets too, come on.”  
  
Ren growls unhappily, gets up holding the thin cover around his waist, swapping it for the survival kit's foil insulation blanket. Hux rolls his eyes– like he hasn't seen a hundred naked officers of varying species and genders in academy and First Order showers, at this point – but doesn't stare.  
  
He goes out back to transfer the water to a large wooden basin, dropping his own clothes and towel in, sans the boxerbriefs. He had of course intended to wash them, too, but following that display of modesty in there Hux supposes he'll keep them on for now. Wash them once his trousers dry.

He's expecting to have to go fetch Ren's things himself but then the knight limps out, looking ridiculous with that foil blanket wrapped around his shoulders; favouring his injured side, his clothing, robes, scarf, and bedsheets piled high in his arms, almost obstructing his face. Ren glances down at the steaming basin, drops his load in, and heads back into the hut without a word. _Thankless son-of-a-_

Hux pours in a little more bleach than he'd been planning on using. 'Accidentally' straight onto Ren's black cloak, rather than into the water. Dips the broom-handle into the mix and starts churning. Tips out the water when he's done, wringing the items by hand before dunking them into the other bucket he'd prepared for the rinse. Sits on the edge of the stone terrace, lights up a cigarette. He doesn't have many left.

He's halfway through hanging the laundry on some old lines that run between the hut and a gnarled tree in the back yard when Ren makes a reappearance.

“Come here,” the knight calls from the back doorstep.

“What?” Hux squints, shaking out a pair of trousers. Ren doesn't respond, but keeps glaring at him from the stoop, so Hux sighs and stalks over. Can't help but suddenly also feel a little exposed. At least he's got his boots on.

Ren produces a cup of tea from behind the drape of the blanket. Holds it out for him.

Huh. Hux takes a moment. Ren extends his hand further, and the general overcomes his surprise to accept the gesture. Takes a sip of the steaming beverage.

“Not bad,” he concedes. Ren nods cursorily and heads back inside.

 


	10. Bad Terms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux wishes he'd taped oven-mitts to Ren's hands._   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The droid should be introduced in the coming chapter or two. And sexiness _is gonna happen, soonish._ It was one of the _first_ scenes I wrote, it just takes a bit to get there! Thanks for bearing with me!  
>   
> 

Hux spends the greater part of the next day doing maintenance on Kaza's cousin's malfunctioning watering systems for the gnarled little orchard they'd walked through when entering the village.

He comes home to Ren sitting on the floor in the far corner of the hut. Even paler than usual, clad in nothing but his leggings, wavering in and out of consciousness. The wound at his side weeps, dark, gaping like a mouth. Reopened.

“What happened?” Hux strides over, tamping down his quickly spiking anger, mind rifling through a list of potential scenarios that might have led to what he sees before him, despite the home around them remaining in perfect order. He hopes, for Ren's sake, it's not what he thinks it is.

Ren doesn't respond. Hears him well enough as Hux repeats his question, by the look of it, but is pointedly trying to ignore the general, sweat-beaded face twining in bitterness, resentment, in pain.

“Get up.”

“Fuck off.”

His bloodied fingers confirm the general's sinking premonition. Ren has torn out all the stitches.

The clamp Hux has on his anger releases momentarily. He drags Ren roughly to his feet without warning. The floor where the knight was sitting, and the wall behind him are stained red.

“Ren!”

Ren shoves him away, swaying on his feet.

“What the hell is this? You have a bloody deathwish? You could have told me that sooner, and I'd put a round in your head, save me the trouble of dragging your sorry arse for days through the desert, stitching up your–”

“You wouldn't understand,” Ren is moving off on shakey legs before Hux is half-finished. He reels himself in with a sharp inhale.

“Please indulge me,” Hux snaps back, his words heavy with sarcasm. “What, is this some sort of dark-side-of-the-Force Sith-training technique?”

“Yes.”

Hux barks out a laugh that dies in his throat as soon as it's started. “Well it's working marvellously, by the look of it. It would take even less than a scavenger girl to finish you off, now. Well done!”

“Fuck you,” Ren has to hold onto the wall, the blood's run all the way down his leg. Hux can hear it pattering on the floorboards.

“Sit!” he points to the chair by the table at the other end of the room, where he'd sewn Ren up before.

It's Ren turn to laugh, hard, derisive, ridiculing. Like Hux is the idiot in this sad picture. Makes to leave the hut out the back door.

Before thinking it through, the general tries to force him back. It goes about as well as could be expected.

Ren tries to shrug him off, and Hux can feel that bone-seeping cold of the Force against him, but it's weaker than before, because it takes only a moment of redoubling to press through it. It passes over him like a broken membrane, like rippling bubble. Ren struggles one-handed to wring himself free of the general's grip, his other arm now wrapped against his wound.

Then he wheels around and socks Hux, right in the side of the face, and Hux sees it coming, the free arm suddenly in motion, but it hits him a lot harder than he was expecting it to. Both men freeze, for a moment.

Alright. That's it. Hux decides to tranq him. He takes the two steps over to the one remaining medipac by the table, goes straight for the tranquilizer. But when he turns back around, it seems Ren has caught on. They grapple, Hux using the knight's momentum to press him against the wall. He can feel the push of the Force make a resurgence as the knight's physique flags around his injury. He can feel Ren's anger lashing like a whip against his mind, dripping with something else. Something like bile. Something like fear.

Hux is slowly, with much effort, trying to move the needle into Ren's forearm, which he's succeeded in pinning against the wall over Ren's head. Ren resists him with his other arm from his good side, and with the Force.

And then, suddenly, Ren releases the hand he has wrapped around the general's tranquilizer-bearing wrist, and uses the Force to redirect. He makes Hux inject it into himself, into his own arm, the one pinning Ren's right against the wall.

“You son– of a– bitch..” Hux is still trying to snipe insults as his legs fail him. His tongue can't form around the words, dropping to his knees, still trying to get to Ren, who's now retreating, Hux grasping at the wall before he falls flat on his face unconscious.

 

   
When he comes to, the sun is setting, its orange licks slicing through the window. His cheekbone hurts, and he touches it, carefully. It's swollen, but nothing seems to be broken. He gets to his legs, still groggy. The back door is open.

Ren is sitting on the small stone terrace, leaning against the outside wall of the hut. There's a patch of thistle, a couple short, gnarled trees. The outhouse. The sun-bleached stones of the wall beyond, shielding the village and its little huts from sandstorms. The bloody sky. Ren sort of lifts his head at Hux's approach, but doesn't quite make eye contact.

Hux sits down on his haunches at the stoop wordlessly. Takes out a cigarette. Sees Ren's head turn, out of the corner of his eye. Hux offers him a fag, without looking at him. Ren takes it, and Hux holds out his lighter.

Ren shuffles over, his movements slow and heavy. Hux lights for him. They sit there, having a smoke in silence. Hux has got about eight fags left.

“You'll dig yourself an early grave, if you keep this up,” Hux growls when they're on their second, eyes scanning the distance. “Ever seen a wound go necrotic?”

Ren snorts, the weakness of his voice rather diminishing its intended effect. “What would you know about it.”

Hux takes another drag. “I served as a commandant during the Order's shakedown of Two-Four-Four Core. The air toxicity was one thing. I had a lieutenant that took a messy shrapnel wound from one of the dissident corporate mercs. Was pretty bad to begin with, then it got infected. It itched, so she kept picking at it. Was one green and black crater two weeks in.” Hux exhales through his nose, watching the smokey tendrils curl up into the falling night. “She died of sepsis.”

“Don't liken me to that weak-minded fool.” Ren's talking slowly, taking unnatural pauses. “The Sith need pain. It strengthens us.”

There's that dramatic streak again. Maybe it would even have come across half-mysterious, or inscrutable, or whatever he was going for, if Ren's voice didn't sound so worn, so frail. Like he was on the verge of tears.

Hux takes a puff and turns to regard him. “You don't look terribly strengthened.”

Ren avoids his gaze. Hux grinds the butt into the stone below him, because he's already at the filter. “Look, I'll make you a deal. You stop wasting my sodding time and energy dragging those stitches out. Just until we get off this hellrock. Then you and Snoke can self-flagellate in a vat of acid or whatever the hell it is you do for training, all the live long day. Agreed?”

“I think it's customary when m-making a deal, General, to offer the other party something.”

Hux drags his hand across his face. _I'm offering you a survival rate you dumb son-of-a-_

“Consider it a personal favour. To me.”

Hux holds out his hand. Ren looks at it, like he's disused to the gesture, before taking it, cautiously. Hux shakes, once, a bit rough, and goes to stand.

Ren doesn't follow immediately, and Hux prepares the medkit while he waits, considering if he was wrong in sparing the knight the humiliation of offering to help him to his feet. When Ren still hasn't appeared once his hands are washed and his tools ready, Hux goes to check on him. Ren is out cold. Probably too much bloodloss. Again. There's a trail of it from Ren's side, down across the stone terrace, into the dusty earth.

Hux drags him in, onto the bed roll with a fresh towel laid out across it. Injects the last of the local anaesthetic near the wound. Ren doesn't even wake while Hux redoes the stitches, struggling to find entry-points left that won't tear in the knight's ruined flesh. His head tosses, though, and he cringes in pain.

“Master.. no.. _please.._ ”

Hux pauses. This isn't the first time he's heard grown men calling out strange things in moments of duress - 'mama' was one favourite. Hell, he'd shouted it himself, once, during a torture sim. Before pissing himself, headbutting his interrogator, and tearing out the stunned man's jugular with his teeth. Certainly one way to crash _that_ program. But something about Ren jars at him. He brushes the knight's sweat-soaked curls out of his face before continuing.

 


	11. Thief In The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux almost convinces himself this is his final day on Atrani 6._

He stops in on Ren during lunch. Just to check on the man. Just to pre-empt any further infuriating setbacks. The faster Ren recovered, the better for both of them. It was.. unexpected, the way the knight mutilated himself. Hux didn't pretend to understand it, though he supposed, on some level, the actions had their motivations. No consoles to destroy. No lightsaber to destroy them with. No men at hand to strangle. Nowhere to vent his frustrations, few tasks to channel his energy into, and Hux knew a man who handled downtime poorly when he saw one.

Still, he hadn't seen it coming. He hadn't seen the defection of FN-2187 coming, either, his memory is quick to remind him. But then, neither had Ren. So much for that fabled insight the Force was supposed to lend its sensitives.

There's more to it than that, though. Hux's hand stills momentarily on the door's handle before opening it. Ren had slain his own father in the oscillator room. Now if only he hadn't stopped there, they wouldn't have lost the sodding Star Killer, tens of thousands of troopers, and they wouldn't have landed in this mess.

Surely Ren didn't deserve pity. And yet Hux's lip curls slightly away from his teeth as the knight's senseless words from the other night return to him. It should please Hux, to think of whatever it is the Leader does to Ren that seeds fear so deep in his subconscious. It should please him.

It bothers him that it doesn't.

Ren's up when he enters, seated by the table, working on the radio, and isn't that a change. Topless and barefoot, clad only in the leggings of his usual five layers of black nonsense, but Hux supposes he's himself in no position to be enforcing uniform code, however much the habit flares at him. He really needs to get a hold of a razor.

More notably, there's what looks like a makeshift fan set up in the room, jury-rigged from an old propeller blade and cable, leading to a rusty solar power-cell that rests on the stoop of the opened back door. Huh. He'd compliment the ingenuity, were he in a better mood.

Ren looks over at him as he thinks it.

"Where did you get this?" Hux asks, a bit abruptly, though not unkindly.

"Stopped some brat as he looked in through the window. Little asshole threw a rock at me."

Hux can't help his chuckle at the mental image it conjures. Ren scowls.

"And what? He had a fan strapped to his back?"

"Asked him to run to the scrapyard and bring me some things."

"..Your persuasion worked on him?" Hux's eyebrows raise imperceptibly, hopeful. Ren waves his hand non-committally and mutters something unintelligible. No, that's not it. Hux's eyes dart over the room. The field rations aren't the way he'd left them. Imperial era trooper fare Hux had found lying around in the barkeep's stores. The owner hadn't wanted them. Vaccufresh and older than either of them, but a welcome change from three solids of blue milk and flavourless rice a day.

“Ah. You bribed him.”  
  
“The dessert cup from a meal ration.” Ren snaps, then softer, turning back to his work, “two rations.”

Hrm. Those were high-energy. Still. Not a bad turn around.

Hux stands over Ren's shoulder as the knight works, hands clasped behind own back, body shifting into the familiar pose like a supple glove made to custom fit.

“Yes?” the knight hisses irritably with a half-turn of his head, visibly displeased with being watched over like an underling.

Hux throws a quick glance at the bandages before giving the man space. They're still the way he'd left them. So are the bloodstains, spatters and streaks across the wooden floor. He supposes it would be too much to expect Ren to clean up after himself.

“What are you doing back so early, anyway,” Ren grumbles into the exposed electronics, switching tools.

Ah. Suddenly Hux feels like he's being asked to show his hand. His mind works fast. “Are you familiar with compression failure on a jumpspeeder?”

Ren pauses for a moment. “Did you check the spark plugs? Each cylinder?”

“Mm, didn't find any issue.”

Ren shrugs, trying to flip that unruly hair back from his eyes. Hux has noticed it's developed a habit of sticking against the fresh scar that now splits the knight's face. “Dunno. Might be the cylinder pistons. I'd have to take a look at it.”

“Ah. That shouldn't be necessary. I'll figure something out.”

“..Is that it?” The way Ren says it has the general add dropping by to his ever-expanding list of recent regrets. He bitches that Hux is absent, he bitches when Hux stops in. Naturally.

“I'll have the amplifier by tonight. In advance, on the promise of working with the junker an extra two days.” Hux makes no pretence of hiding the irritation in his tone, despite what should have been good news, all things considered. “With any luck we'll be off the planet by then, anyway.”

Ren grunts. “Good.”

“Yes. Well.” Hux waits another awkward moment before turning on his heel to exit back the way he came.

 

 

The night passes without incident. Ren had finished installing the converter, power-cells, and new transistors before sundown, but the amplifier would need to wait for daylight. It couldn't bloody come fast enough.

He leaves for work the following day with yet another unpleasant crick in his back from the floor, hips and shoulderblades sore. Kaza sets him to work on some jammed mounted gun on the village's south wall, and though the subject matter is more palatable, the direct sunlight in forty-three degrees centigrade is something the general could certainly have done without. One more day of this hell-hole. Just one more day.

 

 

Hux comes home later than usual, that night.

He knows something's wrong because there's a wooden chair lying about two meters from the front door, which hangs open. He picks up his pace.

The hut's scant furnishings are strewn and scattered across its one room. Some broken, all of them overturned. A few telltale burns from blaster fire blacken the pale walls here and there. There are at least three corpses on the ground, two yinchorri, one rhodian, with no sign of what killed them – other than the thick trails blood leading from one's ears, and another's eyes.

There's Kylo Ren, half-lying on the floor against the bed. And there's the hyper-comm radio. Or what's left of it.

"Where the _hell_ have you been?" Ren cries out, as soon as he sees him.

Hux strides over quickly. Ren stiffens at his approach, thinks perhaps the general's coming at him, but Hux steps over him. Heads straight to the remains of the radio. The amplifier, along with some other parts, have been torn out.

"Yes, they took the amplifier! And anything that wasn't nailed down! Six of them, fully armed, while you were off doing Force-knows what, tightening bolts, having a smoke with–”

Hux wheels around on Ren. Blaming him for this, really, when Hux is the one who's been busting his ass in the desert sun fifteen hours a day just to scavenge up some barely-functioning hardware so they can _leave_ and be done with this wretched place, while _princess_ here lay in bed all day, moaning about the breeze, or the lack of a breeze, or the mattress being lumpy, or the rice being overcooked, or whatever. He's about to give the asshole a piece of his mind when he notices Ren is wincing, chin stuck out in defiance while the rest of him tenses, over-broad shoulders lifting to his ears. Bracing himself, like he expects to get hit. Hux recognizes the expression. A little too well.

Hux sighs, and the heat leaves his veins with it. Drops to one knee. There's barely a meter between them, now. "We'll get it back," he mutters, somewhat alarmed by the weariness in his own voice.

Ren's still looking at him with that half-snarl, those slitted eyes, like he's about to be struck. Instead, Hux leans in to inspect Ren's bandage. It's bleeding through.

"We should take a look at that," he gets off his knee, offering Ren a hand. "Can you stand?"

Ren knocks Hux's arm out of the way with an offended huff and rises to his feet with a hiss - before his legs give out beneath him.

Hux half-catches him under the arms, helps sit him down on the bed. This time, Ren accepts it, without comment. Hux avoids eye contact. He knows now all too well why the knight wears the voice-modulated mask. Too many emotions, too badly concealed. Not to mention how young he looks. Hux promptly busies himself with trying to put the room back together.

"I lost consciousness. After trying to heal myself." It sounds defensive. Hux raises an eyebrow, looks over.

“With the Force,” Ren clarifies, growling. “It's a technique that.. can be done. To an extent.”

"Mm," Hux confirms, trying to brush past this strange admission, its motives at contrast to what he'd come home to two nights ago. Tries instead to right some alien knick-knack that he's realizing he doesn't recognize or know how to right. "Perhaps you should rest."

"I _was_ resting," Ren is incensed again, and the air in the room crackles a bit. "That's the problem, isn't it? This is what comes of it. Avoiding pain. Weakness.” He spits out the words.

“And if you hadn't torn out your stitches, you wouldn't have had _need_ of attempting to heal yourself with such fantastical means, in the first place!” Hux can't help himself. He pinches the bridge of his nose. He would like to continue. To tell the knight what should be woefully evident: that had he been in better shape, had he refrained from tormenting his injuries, he would undoubtedly have slain all of the assailants, and they would not have lost the part.

But he bites his tongue. This isn't the time, and from what he's seen, Ren doesn't exactly respond well to criticism.

He'll take out his frustrations on Kaza in the morning. He's quite convinced she's the one who has crossed him, at this point. Who else could it have been? Foul, conniving lizardmen. It took a special brand of stupid to mistake him for an easy target. Hux would see to that she didn't live to learn from the mistake.

Ren redresses his wound while Hux rights the room. He's a bit alarmed, at first, to see the knight's long fingers tugging at the wrappings – but resists the urge to march over, waits to see what will come of it. But Ren just takes out the medkit, cleans the superficial bleeding. Pauses to glares daggers at Hux, aware he's being observed, before applying a fresh bandage over the stitches. It pleases Hux to see it.

It shouldn't please him.

They discuss the situation. The suspected culprit, the retrieval possibilities. Ren is, unsurprisingly, in favour of leaving a trail of executions until they recover the part. And while Hux would certainly enjoy nothing more at the moment, he's fairly certain a murderous rampage would bring down the whole of the village around their ears. Ren insists he's more than capable of deflecting blaster fire, indicating the marks on the walls as evidence. Hux, however, is not about to bet his life on it. Though he avoids bringing up the event with the sandworm and the scavenger as counterpoint.

They decide on torture and detainment. Customers aren't exactly breaking down the doors of the junker's all hours of the day, and Hux is fairly certain it won't take him more than four hours to get the information out of her, Force resistance or no. They can take it from there, the junk dealer's shop being the better choice for a base of operations in this hell hole, stocked with blaster power-cells and a selection of ancient, but likely still effective rifles.

 

It's past midnight when the room's mostly righted, the corpses dragged out into the street as a warning, their plans laid, their arguments largely hashed.

The cool night-time air drifts in through the wooden shutters, bearing with it the sound of something like cicadas. Hux ashes his last cigarette regretfully, turning over on the bedroll. He'd prefer to be unconscious by the time the night temperature plummets into discomfort, but he still has his greatcoat, pained as he is to see the state of it. Once steam-pressed, crisp, immaculate, now worn, rumpled, sand-blasted. He could really go for a stiff drink. Some Corellian brandy, nicely warmed. Or an old Kuat: mint, champagne, aged rum, bitters. A cigar. He'd just about agree to Ren's suicidal strategum if he could guarantee a good Shento cigarra at the end of it.

Hux sighs, forces his eyes shut. The floor really isn't any more forgiving on this side. Hux is going to destroy this planet. It's going to make top of the list for the Order's new weapons systems testing sites. He'll see to it.

“That can't be very comfortable." Ren's baritone stirs him from his thoughts. It takes Hux a moment to realize Ren is talking to him.

And another, to process the suggestion. Is he...?

No. Ren's probably just rubbing it in. The desert sun must be getting to Hux's head.

“Not at all,” Hux scoffs. “I love sleeping on the ground in a filthy shack in a backwater alien village that doesn't even have indoor plumbing. Just yesterday I woke to something that looked like a kretch skittering over my ankle. That was a real treat."

Ren is silent for a moment. Then he hears what sounds like the knight shuffling in the bed across from him.

"Just shut up and come here." It's nearly a question, the way it lifts up at the end, and Hux _must_ be suffering from heat stroke because instead of snorting, rolling over, and passing out before getting in one final spike at this brooding disaster who dares give him orders – he sits up in his bedroll.

He knew the eye contact would be a mistake. Those black eyes wide in the low light, upset, frustrated. Nervous?

"There's no room," Hux manages, too softly, dragging his gaze away from the absurd fullness of Ren's lips.

"I refuse to be kept up another night by the sound of your teeth chattering. Or maybe you prefer the floor?" Ren sneers, and it's a challenge, Hux knows. Except that it sounds as if Ren is bothered by the thought it might be true.

Hux gets up. Doesn't look at Ren as he walks over. Doesn't look at Ren as he lies down on the bed. He should lie down on his side - economize the space that way - but he doesn't. Lies down on his back, like Ren is. They're pressed against one another, all down the side. Ren's wound is on the left, facing the wall. Hux's right arm hangs off the edge, and Ren's bitched himself hoarse about this mattress since they'd arrived – but at the moment, this is the most comfortable Hux can ever recall having felt.

Well, physically. The awkward tension is another matter. Hux stares at the ceiling, praying the weight in the air will disperse so he can get some rest. He's vaguely certain Ren is as well – except when he tries to take the opportunity to surreptitiously train his gaze over, he notices Ren is doing the same. They both turn back to ceiling, too quickly.

This is ridiculous. They're not going to get any sleep like this, and a couple more nights on that bedroll won't kill him.

Hux really is considering it, but then Ren shifts again, giving him about half of the blanket.

And Hux supposes one night of sharing a bed with Kylo Ren won't kill him, either.

 


	12. Strange Bedfellows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Hux swears he doesn't like his men like he likes his caf: dark, strong, bitter, and scalding._

The first thing Hux registers when he wakes is the scent. He wouldn't have recognized it a week ago, but now it's become familiar, so much so that he knows it even in a half-conscious state. Ren. That untameable, very non-regulation hair of his is in Hux's face.

The next thing he feels, as he drowsily tries to raise a hand to brush the dark strands away, is the slowly dawning horror that they're cuddled together in a terrible pile. His left arm is trapped beneath Ren's neck, his right under Ren's own, which wraps around him. Worse, their legs are tangled: Ren's got one _in-between_ his thighs, and the other hooked overtop. Which is a problem. Because now Hux's got morning wood.

Shit fuck shit. Suddenly Hux has but one coherent thought in his mind: disengage and get your trousers on before the knight notices.

It's basic biology, he tells himself as he tries to extricate his limbs from Ren's without rousing him. Surely the knight's in the same state.

Don't think about Ren's dick. It's not helping matters.

Ren doesn't wake as Hux pulls himself free. Oh, no. He does something far worse. Mumbles in his sleep, a frown forming on those unusual features. Follows the movement, chasing it, curling himself back around Hux's now-seated form.

Hux gets up off the bed as if burned. Gets dressed, quickly. Grabs some water but doesn't bother washing up. Doesn't want to risk Ren waking.

They were supposed to go together, that much they'd agreed upon. Though right now Hux is marching alone through the dusty village streets, still hard, slicking his hair back with one hand, water in the other, rinsing and spitting, telling himself an injured human whose powers of intimidation relied solely on the Force and was likely to interrupt him every ten seconds or so with some infuriating quip wouldn't exactly help in presenting an imposing front to a yinchorri.

Tells himself Ren is probably just lonely – that he was probably thinking of someone else, in his sleep. Somehow that doesn't help, because now Hux is trying to picture _that_ situation. Someone sharing the knight's bed. Perhaps not even sexually, just someone holding him. Some sort of affection in his recent past, enough that the knight's unconscious mind might confuse the general for that person.

Hux is drawing a blank.

He can pinpoint it for himself – the night after the first (and last) use of the Starkiller. Some particularly festive senior staff members, eight drinks in. Nothing overtly sexual – Hux didn't have time or trust enough for that, of late. Not to mention the Order's strict policies against fraternization down the chain of command. Just some over-zealous embraces and drunken, giddy ribbing. Too many powerful men and women in the same room, high on success, anticipation, and rarely indulged-in drinks.

But Ren? The knight who idolized Vader, a Sith known throughout the Empire to be less man than machine? It must have been before Ren started his training. Before the Order. Before–

Hux shakes off the thought. He doesn't know why it bothers him. Why he's even thinking of it.

 

He'll take it out on Kaza. Bursts into the junker's main den like blunt force artillery.

“What the bloody hell do you think you're pulling?” he barks, slamming both hands down on the flexiglass counter.

“I heard, I heard,” she nods, Hux barely getting a start from her for his efforts as she returns to cleaning a launcher barrel. “Chizk saw the bodies this morning. Raiders hit us every now and then.” She smiles sympathetically, the effect somewhat diminished by her long canines, “must have heard about the new boys in town.”

“You expect me to swallow that?” Hux snarls back, leaning forward on the counter. Ten seconds and he's going to put a round in her knee. Truss her up in that chair she likes to sit in while he's working.

“We don't get many Imperials. Must have expected to find powerful weapons and medicine. Did you lose many?”

Eight. Seven.

“They took the fucking amplifier is what they took, Kaza, and anything else that wasn't nailed down.” Five, four.

She shakes her scaly head, rubbing the back of it with one massive hand. “Ah. Sorry, General. But listen. You do good work for me. For everyone. We see what we can find here at Kaza's, yes?” She puts the launcher aside, starts moving into the back storage, motioning for him to follow.

And, alright, now Hux is at the steel door, and she's in the windowless secure storage. Good. The sound of the shot would travel even less this way.

“And where are these _raiders_?”

“Ah, you don't want to go walking up to ones like them, General.” She roots in a code-locked container.

“Where are they?” He repeats. Maybe he won't have to shoot her. Would at least save him the trouble of having to recover the part, install it, and open a beacon before her relatives tried to exact vengeance – and maybe the rest of the town with them.

Kaza stands back up, turning to regard him a moment. Shrugs. “Usually they hole up west of town. Water, there. But you don't want to go up there, General. They shoot you on sight.”

“How many are they?”

She shrugs again. “Many. Last time? Twenty. Maybe thirty.”

She curses in Yinchorri – at least, that's what Hux takes the guttural sound her throat produces to mean, and slams the container shut; her search evidently coming up fruitless. “We check at the workbench! Think I put something there.”

She's almost sympathetic. It's infuriating.

“And why haven't they raided your shop, then?” Hux snaps, allowing her to bustle past him, though he suspects he already knows the answer.

“You don't see the durasteel doors and windows when you go past them every day, General?” she grins toothily, pausing halfway back across the main den. “But they have tried,” she lifts up her tunic, exposing a messy bundle of scar tissue on her belly. “Pulse phase rifle,” she explains. “Three years ago. Almost didn't make it.”

“Shame,” Hux clips.

He's watching her rifle through a variety of conventional-range comms and considering that there's a rather high chance she's actually telling the truth – when suddenly a violent rattling starts up at the side door.

Oh no.

Hux crosses over quickly to open it, Kaza pausing in her search. It's Kylo Ren, his wound making him stand lop-sided in the doorway, looking very put-off indeed. Even moreso than usual. His hair is still a disaster, but at least he's put on his shirt. Though Hux almost wishes he hadn't, because it's some sort of absurd mesh-panelled crop top under black _suspenders_ , honestly, and Hux had assumed some undershirt or other went with it when he'd wrung out the piece doing laundry – but no. There it was, nothing but skin and the bandage underneath.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Ren hisses point-blank into his face. “We were supposed to go together!”

“I didn't think a heavily injured man in suspenders was going to add much of an air of intimid–”

“Ah, welcome!” Kaza calls from across the room, waving at Ren, and Hux turns on instinct, forcing a smile. Ren, it seems, hasn't processed the change of plans, because he's still scowling when Hux turns back to him.

“Why's she walking around? You said you could have it out of her in under an hou-”

“Keep your voice down, will you?” Hux whispers harshly, cutting him off. “I doubt she's behind it. She's proven surprisingly forward, with a little _tact_ applied-”

“-not behind it? Last night you were said-”

“-Yes, well, new information has come to light. You can have a look west of town for an encampment to corroborate-”

“-You thought I robbed you, General?” Kaza interjects, walking towards them, carrying two steaming mugs of what smells like caf. “Thought you know me better than that.”  
  
She sounds almost hurt, and stands there, mugs outstretched, while he and Ren turn and stare blankly, like a couple of teens when the parents walk in. He doesn't realize he'd grasped onto Ren's forearm at some point until has to let go in order to accept the proffered beverages.

“Thank you,” Hux mutters, thrusting Ren's mug at him, causing a splash or two to spill out onto that ridiculous mesh. “And yes,” he continues, ignoring the knight's affronted glare, “well, what else was I to think? You agree to an advance, and we get robbed the next day.”

“If I wanted to cheat you, I'd give you a broken part. Kaza,” she nods at Ren, introducing herself.

“My name is of no consequence,” Ren growls back, still inspecting the drink.

“How is your wound? I told your man about our healer, but-”

“Kaza was just looking for another amplifier,” Hux is more than done with this sorry excuse for pleasantries, “Which she's graciously offered to provide for us.”

“Felt bad. Your man does good work,” she's talking over her shoulder now, looking through a shelf of tech. Hux takes a sharp breath, smiles painfully at Ren's raised eyebrow over what the junker keeps calling him.

“Yes, well, we can't all be thieves and cheats.”

“He always this paranoid?” Kaza chuckles, addressing Ren.

“Worse, usually,” Ren grumbles.

Great. Wonderful. Hux sips his caf angrily. “Since you're here, perhaps you'd like to help us look.” It's not really a question. Ren rolls his eyes, and Hux wonders how often that happens beneath the Darth Fear-Me mask.

 

Ren's off in the side room, trying to see if he could feasibly construct a suitable amplifier from the parts the junker has lying around, when Kaza offers Hux a refill.

“Had a husband like that once, too” she says, pouring from the stovetop pot. “Always carping and moaning. Great sex, though.”

“I, _what!_ ” Hux almost spits the caf back out. How anyone could possibly mistake the two of them for– “We are _not_ wed.” He doesn't know why he's bothering. He's thankful that Ren's out of earshot for this, at least.

Kaza nods, “ah, hasn't proposed yet, has he? Don't wait on him to do it. You never hear the end of it. How you don't _really_ love him, or you would have asked. How you never pay attention to him. How he always has to do all the work in the marriage. And so, and so.” She waves her clawed hand with a smile, as if dispelling old squabbles from the air.

Hux gives up on arguing the point. Sips his caf indignantly instead. Let her think what she will.

 


	13. Pillow Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Ren is an asshole in the streets, but occasionally considerate between the sheets._

It's past nightfall when Hux returns, a T3-model utility droid in tow. Unsurprisingly, the knight had disappeared back to the hut a few hours into the day, muttering something about Kaza's shop being an oven. Took the parts with him to work on, at least, so there was that.

“What's this?” Ren lifts his head from the bed as Hux enters.

“Thought it might expedite some of the menial tasks.” Best not to give Ren the details behind his motivation. Hux needed something like an alarm system, or a guard dog, and he would really rather not deal with an actual hairy beast in addition to Ren. Though he's more than certain announcing as much would lead to another row, another string of prideful objections from the knight to needing assistance or watching over, another black eye or aborted strangulation, and Hux has really had quite enough of all that for one week.

“They're just handing out droids, now?” Ren quips.

“Mm, Kaza's opened a charity,” Hux retorts. “No, it was a simple transaction. I repair one of her models to working order, in exchange for lending it for the duration of our stay. Which,” he glances over at the splayed-open radio, “I assume won't be much longer?”

Ren shrugs. “Shouldn't be.”

Hux had been angling for a more detailed progress report, but, given that the knight seems to have dropped questioning the presence of the droid, Hux supposes he shouldn't press for more.

The droid clicks repeatedly at Ren, trying to introduce itself.

“Its vocabulator's broken.” Ren critiques.

“Yes, I hadn't made it my top priority among all the other work for the parts, thank you. Its basic functions are running. Thought that should suffice.”

The droid clicks doggedly. Ren grunts and lays back down.

Hux can't help but notice he's neatly over onto one side of the bed, not sprawled across it as had been his habit, prior to last night. It looks a bit silly, with his large frame and the not-so-large bed, Ren crowded into just half of it, the other side empty.

He waits for Ren to spread out as he stays up a little longer, making some more adjustments to the T3's algorithms. But he's tired, and pissed off, and Ren's still awake when he's done washing up, still neatly over on his half.

So Hux gets into the bed. Ren even pulls open the covers for him.

It's distressingly considerate, and Hux swallows, avoiding eye contact, determined not to be thrown. Their hands brush as Ren replaces the blanket over him. They're pressed all down the side again, and Hux can't help but think of the way they'd woken up.

He folds his arms across his chest. Maybe there'll be less chance of them waking that way again if he falls asleep like this. _And there would be no chance of it happening at all if you went back to your bedroll_ , his mind supplies.

He'd slept rather well, though. Better than he'd expected to. And really, why return to the floor, like an animal? Hux decides he's overthinking the matter. Starts knocking off the ever-increasing mental list of things he has to catch up on when they're back with the Order, instead. Recruitment, redeployment. Status reports, status reports, more status reports. Resources and development – they'd need to claim another one of those fringe systems or two from the top of their list. Ren and his knights would need to further their training with Supreme Leader Snoke, though stars know whatever that might entail. The lot of good the Force had done for the Order, thus far.

“How does it feel? The Force. To you, I mean.” Hux'd read old descriptions, many of them melodramatic, religious, haughty. He wasn't really a man to go in for superstitions – or piety, for that matter. Still, the telekinetics, the mental intrusions undeniably had their uses. Well, so long as one didn't stumble onto a planet of yinchorri, or hutts, or toydarians.

Ren is silent a moment, and Hux begins cursing himself internally for bothering with such a question. He's almost certain Ren is going to mock him, call him ignorant. The knight had always been more than ready to take any opportunity to highlight the one faculty in which Hux could not best him.

“It's like..” Ren pauses, stirring slightly next to him. “You know that feeling you get. When it's like you've seen something before. Or when you meet someone for the first time, and you can't say why, but you have a bad feeling about them. It's like that. Only..” Ren gestures vaguely, “..more. You feel it, just before it happens. Or so long after, you know the memory can't be yours. It's like you can see... the connections, for a moment. Not see it here,” Ren gestures at his own eyes, “but _here_ ,” points at his temple. “Shifting. Unclear. Rippling – through everyone. Everything. It all comes together, for a moment. But before you can grasp at it – it moves away. Like mist.”

Somehow, Hux'd expected something else. Another kind of answer, especially from Kylo Ren. Something theatrical, grandiose, haughty. Some line about a mystical force a man like him couldn't _possibly_ understand.

“Hrm.” Hux exhales through his nose. “I get that with you.”

He doesn't know why he's said it, and regrets it almost immediately. He's about to turn the comment into an insult – but then Ren laughs. Not that derisive, lambasting snort of his. A soft, low, childish sound. Clean. A sound Hux hasn't heard before.

He can feel Ren turn his head on the pillow they're sharing, to look at him. Hux tries to ignore the way it makes his pulse quicken in his chest. Keeps staring straight ahead at the ceiling.

He ignores it until he can hear the rhythm of Ren's breath deepen, until he feels the change in Ren's exhales as they ghosts across his shoulder. Until he feels Ren slip into sleep beside him, still facing him on the pillow, one black curl from that unruly head of hair resting against Hux's skin.

Only then does he turn to look at him. The gash on Ren's face is looking better, though it's still raw in the middle. That long nose, the soft brow. Close-set eyes, their dark lashes decidedly too long, cheekbones high and broad. All those dark moles, the pale skin. He really is strangely appealing.

The knight's broad lips quirk up in a bit of a smile, through his sleep. Hux starts, worried for a moment he'd said something aloud. No, he wouldn't have done. He's being an idiot. He turns away.

Tries not to think about that lilting thrum in his core as he'd watched Ren in the starlight. That volant sensation, like leaving atmosphere in a TIE-fighter, like receiving capitulations, like nailing a headshot at two kilometres. Like they've been here before.

 


	14. Calibrations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which a droid tries to give relationship advice._

Hux rises just before the sun – a trained habit that neither the longer Atrani days nor its binary star system have shaken. Or, he would rise. He's currently half-lodged beneath Kylo Ren's not-insignificant weight, Ren's head rested just below his shoulder, arm thrown out over Hux, hooked around his narrow waist.

And Hux would like to think he'd had nothing to do with it, only his cheek rests against the top of Ren's head, his arm practically holding the man in place.

Alright, so the desert gets cold at night. Particularly with no housing insulation and just a thin bantha-hair blanket to boot. More likely than not he was just leeching bodyheat – efficient, really. Ren's a furnace, almost uncomfortably so, an aspect that's likely to cross over into pure discomfort if they stay this way much longer.

Hux tries to dislodge himself, but the movement just makes Ren hook one of those gangly legs up over his, and roll the rest of the way onto him. Okay. Hux struggles to resist the urge to elbow Ren, hard, in the stomach. It wouldn't do to give what may at this point be his fastest ticket out of here kidney failure by sharp impact to an abdominal chest wound that's barely been stitched together for two days.

“Ren,” he warns, clearing his throat, trying to shift out from under him.

Nothing.

“Oh look who it is! Lord Vader, what-ever are you doing here?” Hux announces loudly, looking over at the imaginary visitor.

“What about Vader?” Ren slurs against Hux's chest, slightly wetting the fabric of his undershirt, still half-asleep by the sound of it.

“Why, it's the Lord Vader himself! Back from the dead, and here to give you a big Sith medal, if only you'll _get off me_.” Hux punctuates the command with another attempt at getting free.

It actually works. Ren, still asleep, shifts fitfully to and fro, mumbling something to the effect of “tha's not what Vader would say,” and his arm leaves Hux's waist long enough for the general to slide free.

Hux leaves the bed and dresses quickly, before he can regret it.

 

He's five paces out the door when he hears the T3 unit putting behind him.

"T301," Hux snaps, "return to your post." A slight rush ripples through him – ah, to be giving orders again. The absurdity is not lost on him.

The droid clicks questioningly.

Hux takes two long strides towards it, leans over slightly. Best not to be announcing his doings to the whole town at dawn, anyway.

"Do you recall your orders?" He says, more quietly.

The droid clicks once, hesitantly, then with confidence.

Hux nods. “And contact me on the beeper if something should go awry,” Hux pats the small remote unit at his belt.

T30 clicks quizzically.

“Yes. No. Obey him as long as it doesn't conflict with my orders. Don't anger him. Electronics tend to break when Ren's upset.”

T30 clicks nervously.

“Are we clear now?”

T30 clicks doggedly.

"Then return to your post until I relieve you in the evening."

T30 clicks in confirmation, then again, inquiring.

"Yes. In the evening. Dismissed."

T30 opens and shuts an energy cell compartment on its chassis, the movement of the hatch an imitation of a salute. Hux almost smiles.

 

* * *

 

“You,” Ren addresses the droid brusquely, “hold this casing open while I get at that wire.” The knight had had an ill awakening, as usual on this infernal heatsink of a planet, when the noontime suns turned the bed into a veritable sweatbath.

The droid clicks and does as its told.

“What's your designation, anyway?”

T301 clicks its response. Ren pulls the wire free, then puts down the wirecutter and turns to face the droid.

“Going to have a look at that vocabulator of yours, I can barely understand that kriffing clicking.”

T30 clicks happily, then holds quite still while he works.

“There. Try that.”

“Bee-beep!”

Ren grunts, turns back to the radio. He tries to resist the urge to address the droid for anything other than tasking it.

He doesn't last very long.  
  
“So. How long have you been in this wasteland?”

“Bee-bee-dreet!”

"And you don't know how you got here?"

"Be-bree-deet."

"You were probably found by scrappers. Surprised they didn't strip you for parts."

"Dwooo. Dee... dee deet?"

"Hyperjump accident."

"Bee-beep?"

"It's complicated."

"Dee da dreet?"

“I don't know,” Ren inclines his head in mock inspection. In spite of himself, there was something just a bit endearing about a droid who wanted to see the stars. “Do as you're told, and we'll see.”

"Bee-beep?"

Ren huffs out a laugh. “It depends.”

"Bee-breet?"

“On who's giving the order.”

"Bee-bee-beep?"

“What.” Ren puts down the hydrospanner. “No,” he hisses, mood suddenly gone sour. “What's he been telling you to make you think that?” It _would_ be like him, Ren's mind supplies bitterly.

"Doo-da-doot. Bee-beep-breep."

Ren almost snaps the tuner. “ _No_.”

“Doo-deet?”

"Because no one is friends with a droid.”

"Droo-dee-da-beep-boop!"

"No one sane is friends with a droid."

"Dwooo. …Bee....bee-boo-beep?"

"No one. Alright? Attachments are weaknesses."

"Dwoo... da... da deet-dreet!"

"Hux? Your processing unit must be overheating. I think it takes all his energy not to shoot me on sight. Not that he'd get very far if he tried," Ren adds in a mutter.

"Bree-bee-deedroot." T30 beeps in aggravating self-assurance.

"Whatever. Your processor has clearly spent too long cooking in the sun.”

 

* * *

 

Hux is under Kaza's jumpspeeder when Ren shows up at the shop in the afternoon. He rolls out from under it when the door chimes go off, a yinchorri cigarra in the crook of his mouth, sleeves rolled up, streaks of engine oil on his arms.

Ren opens his mouth like he's about to speak, but then shuts it again without a word. Just stands there, somewhat hunched, frowning.

“What?” Hux is slightly unsettled by the way Ren's looking at him.

“..Nothing. Boosting sub-hyper amplifiers isn't working. I'm going to try with a pre-amp. Came by for one, and a different transformer.”

Hux nods, wiping his hands on a rag. “Ask the dealer,” he indicates the room behind him with a tilt of his head. “On second thought, I'll do it.” Kylo Ren wasn't exactly the most eloquent social tactician to send in for negotiations.

“The coolant pump is loose,” Ren mutters when Hux returns, rocking the pully with his hand. “Might want to check the drive belt, and the bearings. I take the leak's still acting up.”

Huh. “I'll have a look then,” Hux confirms, only slightly annoyed at being corrected. Anything that helps them off this rock. Ren nods absent-mindedly and limps off without another word. Hux watches him go.

 

When he comes home at night, it looks like Ren is already asleep, dampened scarf placed over his head. T301 stands guard against the wall opposite the bed, in view of both front and back doors.

So Hux washes up quietly, has his meal and some tea, inspects the radio. Fetches some more water from the well.

Ren's still looking asleep over on his half of the bed when Hux is quite done for the night.

He gets in bed quiety. Ren doesn't stir.

Hux is halfway settled into the crook of Ren's neck before he realizes what he's doing. Freezes mid-movement, something akin to nausea sweeping over him. He shifts away, pauses a moment, then rolls onto his side, facing away from the knight. Folds his arms across his chest and shuts his eyes and goes over that new speech he'd been preparing for their return to the Order. _His_ return to the Order. Damn it.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>   
>  My apologies for the length of time between updates! The next chapter (a very nsfw one!) is mostly written and will go up ~~tomorrow~~ Tuesday*. Rating will increase to Explicit. :3
> 
> *Apologies! Had a busy Monday, need another day! The chapter's getting more content, though, so there's that?


	15. Bad Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Ren and Hux have ~~a romantic candlelit dinner~~ a screaming match and moonshine._   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split this into two chapters since it started running away from me, word-count wise! Rating has been increased to Explicit, please heed the tags again. I am currently busy with my KBB submission but I will definitely continue posting for this fic once that's done!  
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Hux is looking into the face of his father. Not his father. A man Hux doesn't recognize. A face backlit in the unstable red of his lightsaber. His lightsaber. The man's dying on it. And he reaches out for Hux's face, stroking it. It's the last thing he'll ever do.

Hux might as well have walked right off the edge maintenance ramp. Flung himself into the Starkiller core, its dark energy accelerating the space between his atoms until he's shredded into less than dust.

There are no voices, no locust swarm of dark powers enveloping him. No cosmic secrets come undone. No lightning sparks from his fingertips. He's just murdered an old man, one who'd come to him in supplication. He is no revenant Sith Lord. No military strategist.

He's just a common murderer.

His father's-not-his-father's body begins to crumple off the edge of the ramp, face twisting in pain. Twisting, writhing, until it transmutes into the familiar ashy death's head of durasteel and obsidian, its ruined mouth gaping open in a silent cry.

Hux screams, he reaches for it – just as the bowcaster charge hits. The impact sears all the flesh from his arms as he reaches out to try and halt it.

Hux wakes up in a cold sweat, the shout dying in his throat, the vision of his charred bones retreating into the dark corners of the room.

Ren is curled in on himself, facing the wall, sobbing violently.

Hux sits upright, stunned, trying to stir his thoughts into wakefulness. It doesn't take much to conclude that hadn't been his own dream.

“Ren?”

The knight's shoulders quiver. He's clutching at his wound, by the look of it.

“Ren.” Hux says again, fully alert now, but uncertain of how to proceed. Considers putting a hand on the knight's shoulder – but he doesn't want to throw gasoline on the flames.

" _I feel it,_ " Ren's voice trembles, like it might fall apart in the night air.

"Feel what?"

And with a drop in his stomach Hux notices Ren's hand isn't clutching at his wound. He's digging around in it.

"Always,” Ren's louder now, hissing through a clenched jaw, “always in the back of my mind. _Spare him. Let it be_. I can't let it be!” he shouts at the wall, “I can't be free of it! Snoke said I would be rid of it! _He lied to me!_ ” Ren's voice rises into a scream. “ _He lied to me!_ He lied to me! Like Han-fucking-Solo, always that stupid smile and a string of lies! Skywalker– Snoke said he lied, he said, he said my grandfather, he said–!”

Ren trails off into sobs, voice breaking on them.

“Ren,” Hux says, out of his depth, determined not to show it, “we'll sort it. Don't do this.”

Ren laughs, and it turns into a cry, Hux can see his hand working, grasping hard, clawing, forcing deeper into the wound. It ends on a scream.

Alright. That's it.

His instinct is to force Ren's hand away, pin him to the bed, shout to T30 to fetch the first aid kit – or what remains of it. But in the next second he thinks the better of it. Ren could lash out, snap his neck at any given moment if he plays this wrong. He didn't become a General at this age for lack of tactical acuity. The bedsheet absorbs red, a jagged, uneven circle that crawls steadily towards him.

He tries for a gentler approach.

“Tearing out your insides won't get you any answers. Just. Stop for me.”

Ren's arm actually stills. All the muscles down the bent bow of his back shaking. Hux hazards a touch to his shoulder.

That was a mistake, he realizes, the strength of the Force-blow knocking him from the bed.

"Get out!” Ren screams, turning on him, “leave me alone!"

Hux lands a meter or so from the bed on his hands and knees.

"You _are_ alone!” He shouts back before he can stop himself, getting to his feet. “Surely you see that?"

"Why do you care!" Ren's screaming again, staggering from the bed, bent forward, arms wrapped around his gaping side. "You would never have been here, if it weren't for me! You could have told them I died! You could have left me on the Starkiller! In the crash wreck! I would have! Why didn't you?!"

“Snoke bid me retrieve you–”

Ren laughs, hysterical. “You didn't need to come after me yourself, like a petty officer! You could have sent any number of troopers out to get me! Which they would have no doubt failed, leaving you the sole figurehead of The Order! Kylo Ren, the weak fool slain by a scavenger. Snoke would have lavished you with his attention! Why didn't you? Why didn't you?!”

Hux doesn't know the answer to that.

To any of this.

So he walks over to the cabinet. Takes out one of the bottles of that four-x homebrew he'd pilfered. Pours himself a glass, takes a seat at the table. Pours another for Ren, after a moment. T30 dwoo-oo's quietly, peaking out at Ren from behind the shelter of Hux's greatcoat, slung over the chair where he's seated.

Ren watches him, still rooted to the spot he'd staggered to, like he's confused by the lack of answering aggression. Hux knocks back a drink and tries to ignore the knight's mangled side, weeping blood. The pale expression, slashed through with the red of the scar. The forehead beading with perspiration. The glazed-over eyes that can't quite focus through the pain. Ren's not going to let him near it.

Not yet.

  
"How much of this you got?" Ren asks finally, taking a few unstable steps forward before sinking into the other chair.

"Enough to get a bantha sloshed."

Ren takes a drink and grimaces. "You wasted money on this swill?"

"I may have overheard the barkeep speaking of his hidden stash while examining his malfunctioning cooling unit."

Ren's scar-slashed lip quirks up in something that's almost a smile. “I never took you for a small-time thief, General."

"Mm, the locals must be wearing off on me. Whatever gets the job done, I suppose." He holds up his glass towards the knight. Ren hesitates at the gesture for a moment, before clinking his glass against the General's, and draining it.

T30 cautiously putts out from behind the General's chair, positioning himself in the space between the two, if somewhat more to Hux's side.

"Bee-dreet?"

Hux shakes his head almost imperceptibly at the droid before refilling their glasses. _Not yet._

“I think you'd like Arkanis,” Hux begins. He actually hasn't the foggiest what Ren would like or dislike, though the latter seems to be everything. “Constant cloud cover. Sun barely ever comes out. None of this forty-five degrees centigrade, throat-scraping-dry nonsense. Not to mention it was something of the training grounds for the Empire's intelligentsia.”

“You're conflicted about it,” Ren corrects, hunched forward, and Hux has to bite back his objection to the knight reading his emotions. This isn't the right time.

“Yes, well. Who isn't, about their home planet?”

“..I wouldn't know. Never stayed in one place long enough.” Ren drains his glass, Hux refills for him.

“Trying to get me drunk, General?”

“Trying to be a _gentleman_ , Ren, something I'd wager you know little about.” He says it with as much of a smile as he dares. “Though seeing as it would only leave more for me, feel free to abstain.”

Ren gives him a weak grin, eyes still glazed with pain. Knocks back half the glass in his next go.

“Any favourites? Places you've been, that is. Planets. Systems.”

Ren shrugs. “I don't play at favourites. I take the Hosian wasn't one of _yours_.”

“A sacrifice for the sake of order. But no, it wasn't.” Hux taps the side of his glass idly, keeping one eye on Ren. Thinking. “Once we've crushed the rebels and established a proper foothold, I think The Order should review the possibility of campaigning further into the Outer Rim. One the one hand, we don't know what we'll find. On the other hand,” Hux can't help the hungry grin that creeps over him, “we don't know what we'll find.”

Ren makes a sound that might be disagreement, might be accession. He reaches for the bottle. He's spilling already, tremors likely more due to pain than utter alcohol intolerance. Then his eyes light.

“There may be other Force techniques. Ones unknown in any of the Core Systems.”

Hux nods slowly, reaching to help steady the knight's attempts at setting down the bottle. Their hands touch. It's only a moment, but the contact burns his skin like frostbite. Hux jerks his hand back.

“Sorry,” Ren actually mumbles.

“It's alright,” Hux shakes his hand out a bit. There doesn't seem to be any damage. Who knew a little bloodloss, internal abdominal trauma, and a bottle of moonshine were all it took to get an apology out of the knight?

“So this mind-reading business. Seems like it should have more applications than we've been taking advantage of.”

Ren scoffs, indignant. “It doesn't _work_ that way. It's not _sentences_. It's..” Ren struggles for words, folding his arm tighter against his mangled side. “Emotions. Images. Impulses.”

“Alright,” Hux takes a sip. “I'll think of something. You tell me what I'm thinking.”

“It's not a parlour trick,” Ren snaps back.

“No, it's a drinking game. Three guesses per thought. Loser drinks. Just don't break anything up here. Ready?” Hux doesn't give Ren a chance to respond. Focuses on the first thing that comes to mind.

“Agony. Starkiller.”

Well. That probably wasn't the best thing to think of. But Ren's huffing, not put off. “Give me a _challenge_ , at least, General.”

“Alright.” Hux takes his losing shot.

Focuses on the second thing that comes to mind, which, for whatever reason, is his mother.

“Hair. A cool room.” Ren sucks in a breath, looks focused. “Your mother?”

“Mm,” Hux nods, slams another shot. “You'll have me under the table at this rate.”

Ren rolls his eyes. “You're not trying.”

“Next one, then.”

Ren frowns, leaning in closer, apparently somewhat confused by whatever he's getting. “Troopers – death? Failure?”

Close enough.

“A botched offensive, when I was just a commandant. Over-extended. Bad engage. Lost the entire battalion.” Hux stares into his glass.

“I hadn't heard of this.”

“No. You wouldn't have.”

 

When the liquor starts impacting his system, Ren wants to put his hand on Hux's face.

“The reading works better this way!” he insists, stumbling onto him. Hux huffs a laugh, helping right the man. Then pushes his arm away.

“You'll fry something!”

“I won't!”

“I heard Dameron's screams.”

“That was different. Come on,” Ren splays that big hand on the side of his face, and Hux sighs in exasperation. Lets him.

Hux doesn't know what he was expecting, but it isn't what he gets. Ren inhales, too quickly, pulling back after barely five seconds.

“What?” Hux isn't even sure what he'd been thinking of. He'd barely had time to register Ren's presence. The liquor's starting to hit him like an undertow.

“..Nothing.”

“Oh come on, you can't do that. What was it? Saw something you couldn't stomach?”

“No.” Ren huffs, shaking his head. He doesn't look upset, though. More taken aback. Surprised. Thoughtful. “..I'll tell you later.”

“Fine.” Hux supposes it's the best he'll get, at the moment. “You know this is all very one-sided.”

“What were you expecting? Show me yours and I'll show you mine?” Ren smirks, taking a drink, spilling some of it down his bare chest. It makes little clear rivers through some of the dried blood.

“You know I can't _bear_ the thought of you having something on me,” Hux drawls with a slight answering grin, words laden with mock anguish.

He rises from the chair to fetch another bottle, because apparently they've already gone through on. Ren laughs as the wall seems to move to intercept Hux's path.

“Hux, I'll hand leadership of the Knights of Ren over to you right now if you can do a perfect parade march.”

“You assume I _want_ anything to do with your madmen,” Hux smiles, returning somewhat more gracefully with a fresh bottle. Ren holds out his mug.

“You're right, they wouldn't bow to you.”

“Mm. Only some three million men do.” Hux refills their drinks. “Besides, if they answered to me, what would the Supreme Leader need _you_ for?”

Ren snorts, raises his glass. “To the Knights of Ren.”

“To the First Order,” Hux corrects.

Ren huffs out a laugh. “To teamwork, then.”

“To teamwork.”

 

 

 


	16. Skin Off Like Lightning

 

One litre of hard liquor, two hours of heavily sloshed strategic warfare planning, and three or four affable drunken arguments later, Ren lets T30 clean, disinfect, stitch up, and bandage his re-opened wound.

Hux doesn't even notice he has his hand over Ren's until the droid is finished. When did he become the kind of idiot who keeps putting his hand on the hot stove-top?

“Better?” Hux asks, letting go and moving away to get them some water. It's almost as if Ren makes a start to reach after him.

“Feels worse,” Ren's grimaces, voice gone hoarse, tongue thick with liquor over the syllables.

“Think we should sleep,” Hux suggests, already cringing at the thought of the hangover they've got waiting.

“Yeah,” Ren agrees, and tries to stand.

Try is definitely the right word. Ren laughs as he slides back into the chair, hair falling over his eyes.

“If Mitaka could see you now,” Hux stumbles over, trying to help the knight to his feet. “He's never really recovered, you know.”

He succeeds in pulling Ren up on the third try. Ren's still laughing, hair still over his eyes, slightly larger frame swaying against him. They're standing too close together.

“Come on,” Hux half tugs, half herds him the few steps to the bed, “in you get.” Ren's unruly enough on his soberest days. Laughing and hammered, it feels somewhat like wrangling an uvak. Hux tries to tip him over, deposit the man onto the bed. Ren needs to recover, should have the space to himself.

But before he can withdraw, Ren pulls Hux down on top of him.

Hux doesn't know if it was intentional. The knight's stopped laughing, at least, his dark hair slid back out of his face. With a wince Hux realizes he's half-hard. Tells himself it's the liquor, hopes Ren hasn't noticed. Tries to pull himself loose before Ren _does_ notice.

"Where are you going?" Ren slurs, still holding onto him, his voice unguarded as it is without the mask, now all the more that he's plastered. Wounded. Stranded.

"Just to clean the mess," Hux attempts lamely.

"The droid will clean it," Ren tugs at him, and without meaning to Hux follows. One of those long, lean thighs slides itself in between his legs, and Hux hopes he succeeds in biting off his groan.

"It's alright," Ren whispers, and it's a low, drunken purr, the liquor warm on his breath. "General. It's alright."

Ren is hard, too. Hux can feel it against his hip. Ren's running one hand through Hux's hair, the other rubbing over the small of his back, and these flash-flood moodswings of Ren's are giving Hux whiplash. He groans, this time audibly, his traitorous body rocking up once against Ren, hard, smooth, warm beneath him.

" _Oh.._ " Ren's voice is too thick, too low, and Hux steadies himself on his forearms where they're placed, to either side of Ren's head.

Ren is pawing at him gracelessly, those clumsy hands working his shirt open, groping him without skill, without tact. Like he's on a time limit. He's shaking all over. Hux is answering the bucking of Ren's hips before he realizes what he's doing. He slows the man down, at least, leaning into it with each drag. It sets Ren off, gasping, and he adjusts, starts chasing Hux's movement. Rubbing his swollen prick against the heat of Hux's with every roll of Hux's hips.

Dully, in the back of his mind, Hux recalls the severity of the knight's injury.

“Ren, you're h— _ah.._ ”

The knight's broad palm slides between them, starts rubbing Hux's dick through his uniform trousers, fingertips against his tightening balls, cutting the rest of the blood supply to his brain. Hux is so hard he's aching.

“You're– _fuck..”_

Ren's eyes. He can't take them. He doesn't dare look away. Wet, wide, pitch. Young. Nervous.

“Can I?” Ren whispers, so low he almost doesn't catch it, and Hux is nodding his head yes before he's even understood the question.

Ren unzips his trousers before he understands, his breath catching in his lungs.

Ren doesn't grab him roughly, which he'd been expecting with a wince. Ren's just stroking those long fingertips softly, suddenly gentle, through the red-gold nest of curls around his prick. Starts touching Hux, lightly, fingers and thumb just brushing along his shaft.

Hux's jaw clenches, unclenches. He takes over. Doesn't press Ren's hand away, exactly, as much as he distracts the knight with his own. Cups the man beneath him, spreading his hand, wrist turned up, over the curve of Ren's dick in his boxer-briefs. Ren gasps in loudly, pressing his hips up into Hux's grip. Hux keeps massaging, feeling the shape of him. Ren moans, spreading his thighs wider, and Hux has to remember to breathe.

He lowers his mouth to Ren's neck, unable to resist the pale, long swathe of it. Kisses, more sloppily than he'd like, down to the collarbone, down to Ren's chest. Pausing at every dark freckle. The skin bumps, flushes beneath him. Laps, just once, gently, at the nipple on Ren's wounded side, switching quickly to the other, to suck it hard instead. Keeps kissing down. Tongues Ren's navel. Ren's practically sobbing.

Hux presses his open mouth, hot, wet, over the head of Ren's dick, still trapped in his briefs. Now Ren is definitely sobbing. Hux can see the muscles in Ren's stomach jumping, and feel the ones in Ren's thighs against his arms doing the same. Laps at the head, he can taste the man's salty precome leaking through the thin fabric, and he doesn't even try to hide his appreciative groan. It's barely audible over Ren's moaning, anyway.

Ren threads the fingers of his hand through Hux's, braced at the side of the knight's hip. Hux pretends he doesn't notice.

Instead he rubs his face side to side against the clothed, now damp length of Ren's dick and balls, his week-old beard catching slightly in the fabric. Ren is senseless. Hux is growling, dips down further, sucking kisses into the pale skin dusted with dark hairs on the inside of Ren's bare thighs, below his briefs. Licks along the silvery scars that catch in the moonlight.

Hux slides his own long legs off the bed, kneeling at the bottom of it. Carefully slides both arms under Ren, unlacing his hand from Ren's. Pulls him slowly down the bed, until the back of Ren's spread knees are flush up against Hux's shoulders. Ren starts jerking his underclothes down, and Hux intercepts, assists, the knight's dick, red, heavy, bouncing free. Ren hisses, reaches for his hand again, and Hux doesn't want to think about what that does to him.

Ren's eyes roll back when Hux starts twisting a hand down over his dickhead. All the way down the length, all the way back up, suckling the tip. He lets off with his hand, starts swallowing Ren down. He has to pause half-way as his throat adjusts. Ren's gone shock-still. Hux slides his hand around to gently roll Ren's balls, and, hearing him cry out in respond, slides his mouth all the way down to the base. Ren's not thrusting into his mouth, not really, he's more shaking, legs undecided if they want to wrap around Hux's back or fall open for him. Hux drags back up, slowly, tonguing the underside as he goes, drooling out the corners of his mouth. Reaches the head without pulling off all the way, swirling his tongue nice and heavy around the tip, suckling lightly, the sounds wet, sloppy, the ripe taste of him filling his mouth.

Ren's crying out. He hooks his legs tighter over Hux's shoulders, pulling him forward. Hux moans as he swallows Ren's dick back down, the knight shuddering beneath him. He can't keep a proper pace, drunk and whiplashed on the knight's changing moods – but he'll be damned if it doesn't seem to bother Ren in the slightest.

Ren's bucking up unevenly, Hux trying to hold his hips down. Not for his own sake, not because he doesn't want Ren fucking himself on his General's face – but Ren's injured. They really shouldn't be doing this. He really shouldn't. But he can't even keep himself from rubbing himself against the edge of the mattress in sympathy as he blows Ren, his own neglected prick aching. He hopes Ren's too occupied to notice it.

Ren's crying out with every bob of Hux's head. His free hand grips the sheets till his knuckles white. Hux has never known anyone to be this sensitive.

He picks up his pace, but Ren's cries become erratic. Louder, almost like he's in pain. Muscles all down the knight's chest jumping visibly. Legs trembling against Hux's shoulders, jerking every now and again. Hux pulls off, concerned.

“Ren?” He slides up from between the knight's legs. This was a mistake, he thinks. He knew this was–

But before Hux can ask what it is, if it's the wound, if he hurt him, Ren rises up and pulls him into a kiss. Hux's swollen, dripping mouth still tasting of Ren, the knight moaning loudly into it as he sloppily thrusts his thick tongue in. Ren is clutching at him, next to desperate, groping down his back, grabbing his ass, and Hux has to break off the kiss to breathe before he passes out.

He leans back on one forearm, sliding the other hand between their bodies. Wraps his hand around both their dicks. He has to squeeze a bit, and it forces a groan from them both. Hux drops his head into the pillow against the side of Ren's head, breathing hard into the pale neck, sucking kisses into it. Stars burst white behind his eyes.

Ren's close, but whines, shifting under him, pawing clumsily at his hips. "I want to suck you off..."

Hux shakes his head no, while his dick screams and plots his death in protest at the back of his mind. "You're hurt.."

So Ren moves his hand over Hux's on their dicks, stilling his motions a moment, and Hux understands. Ren takes over, those long fingers wrapping tightly around them both. Hux releases a shuddering breath, has to relieve his straining arm by planting down the other, on the other side of Ren's head.

Hux thrusts into Ren's hand as the knight pants below him, wrapping those absurdly long legs around him, making sounds entirely too close to soft gasps and whimpers in that low tone that goes straight through Hux's core.

 _"Ah,_ Hux, so good, it's _so good. You take such good care of me. Ah! Always w_ _anted you like this. Want you to fuck me like this._ _Hux. I want you so bad_. _"_

It's too much. Hux doesn't last a moment longer. He gasps, his hips stuttering. He feels that shudder start going through Ren, that first ripple run up the purple dick pressed against his own. Ren's coming, body spasming, Hux can hear what sounds like the glasses on the table shattering, his own harsh breath, but most of all, those high, lilting cries Ren makes as he bucks raggedly up against him.

Hux flattens himself against the younger man, he can't help it, and Ren cries out even louder, maybe in pain, though his legs wrap all the tighter around Hux's hips. Hux jerks his body into the hot slick between them, the warmth of Ren's come, Ren's dick, Ren's skin too much on his own swollen, spilling cockhead. He bites onto Ren's neck, hard enough to bruise, last scrap of willpower saving him from breaking the skin. Ren cries out again, loud, he's so loud, and Hux groans through the last of his orgasm. Their orgasm.

Hux doesn't go long before he starts groping blindly for his discarded undershirt, body resisting every attempt at movement. He doesn't find it, so he uses a corner of the blanket to mop up the mess between them, careful at the edges nearing the bandage. At least the dressing is water-proof.

He wants to roll off of Ren so they can clean up better, so he doesn't aggravate the injury even more than this night has already fucked it up. But Ren, it seems, won't have it. Hux settles in with a sigh, half on his side, half draped over Ren; burying his face in that dark mane of curls and breathing deep, deep until his lungs ache. He hopes he chokes on it. He hopes he never wakes up.

"Hux.." Ren's voice is uncharacteristically small, sore at the edges, and it nudges at him, just as he's falling asleep.

"Mm?"

"..thanks. For coming to get me."

Hux tightens his hold. " ' Welcome."

 

 


End file.
